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inmyriadbitsLast night, I saw Enemy At The Gates with Jude Law as a famous Russian sniper in the Battle of Stalingrad. Since it is way too depressing a prospect right now to think serious thoughts about a) WWII, b) the millions of people who died in that battle, c) all the characters who die in the film, or d) melodramatic adaptations of real events, I have some shallow ones for you all instead:
1. Very important observation, this one: Jude Law is a damn good-looking man, even when he's covered in dust/mud/blood/etc. (Maybe especially then, because it makes his eyes stand out all the more.) Also, I don't know how he did it, but he made his face look Russian. I'm not sure how that's possible, but somehow, he made it happen.
2. Rachel Weisz is a damn good-looking woman. I think I would like more films where she is a sniper, thank you. She's also exceedingly likeable; I have yet to see a film in which I didn't like her character, even when there were things I didn't like about the character. That's a great quality.
3. Holy shit, that one scene where they have semi-public mostly-clothed sex in the factory while everyone else is sleeping/unaware and they can't talk or make any noise? GUH. Unbelievably hot. *fans self*
4. Ed Harris's character was a bastard, but I do love me a competent antagonist. I sorta wish they hadn't taken him to the child-killer place; IMO, the story was more interesting when he told the kid to stay home and left him out of it. But then again, I'm biased toward making villains a little sympathetic, thereby to make their villainy the more awful.
5. I admit...I am now left imagining Afghanistan-era Dr. John Watson. And it's not even all Jude Law's fault; the same thing happened to me after the "Bastogne" episode of Band of Brothers, because, well, Doc Roe (♥ he's my favorite!).
You know, the way Watson describes his Army career in A Study in Scarlet is very misleading. While one of Watson's charms is the humility that keeps him from talking about himself all the time – or much at all – seeing as many in his position would exaggerate their own importance in the events, his incredibly understated descriptions of his own actions are terribly misleading. This is one of the reasons I find Jude Law's depiction so enjoyable; he makes Watson a real person, and in a way that's true to the kind of man who would tone himself down so much in his narratives, but whose character still shows through by the things he does and the company he keeps. I ascribe to the idea that Watson, while a faithful chronicler of Holmes and his cases, is not as faithful chronicling himself. He errs on the side of too little information and too little credit for himself. Watson also doesn't cop to it in the same way that he would admit to leaving out other information (out of respect for the clients or the sensitivity of the details or whatever), which probably accounts for a lot of the adaptation decay you see in portrayals of Watson.
(Okay, I admit, I find the dissection of Watson's narration geekily fascinating. Getting to the point now...)
The opening of A Study in Scarlet is a prime example. Because Watson describes the action succinctly and doesn't describe the passage of time, I came away from reading it with the impression that events progressed one after another in a short period. This, however, is so totally not the case. Perhaps it might be best to go through the text in little bits and give context and elaboration.
Watson opens:
In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army.
We don't know how old Watson is in 1878. As far as I know, there aren't any references to his age in canon, but I can speculate. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself was only about 26 when he wrote A Study In Scarlet (published when he was 28). He took his medical degree at the age of 22; according to some obituaries I read, this was about typical, although some managed an M.D. by 20. Anyway, let's call Watson 22, because he's a vaguely Doyle-shaped author-insert anyway.
So 22-year-old John Watson graduates, presumably in June. He joins the Army and studies through the summer.
Next:
Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy's country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.
I think it's important to note that as far as I can tell, the British were not involved in any major conflicts in the summer of 1878. The last major war had ended six years earlier. British troops occupied its colonies, but weren't generally holding pitched battles.
This means that Watson joined a peacetime army. He likely had no notion of being sent off to a front almost immediately after joining up and training. In fact, he leaves England expecting to be stationed in India. Can you imagine arriving with that expectation and instead having to dive into a major war? The Second Anglo-Afghan War kicked off in September of 1878. Watson had been in the army three months.
Also, if you take the time to look at a map, you will notice that there is quite a lot of distance between Bombay (now called Mumbai) and Candahar (now spelled Kandahar) – about 1000 miles of it (1500 km). There are also a number of large mountains in the way, and the "passes" Watson so casually refers to look like this. Or this. And it may also be enlightening to remember that the Northumberland Fusiliers were an infantry regiment, which by definition means that they were on foot.
Gosh, that sounds fun.
The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster.
Translation: "After a super-long hike, I got to be a doctor dropped into the middle of a war where the enemy has swords that can do things like shear off part of a man's skull [which happened to the real doctor from the First Anglo-Afghan War that people speculate Doyle used as inspiration for Watson]. Oh, and they have guns, too. And then, my luck got really bad..."
I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand.
"Removed from my brigade" seems a pretty innocuous statement, right? Of course, depending on when it happened (and from the way Watson phrases it, I think it wasn't long before the battle), this probably means that Watson was separated from all the people he knew and had befriended up to this point, and was stuck with an entirely different lot of soldiers. Most of whom promptly died horribly.
The Battle of Maiwand was fought on July 27th, 1880, almost two years after the war started. You'll note that Watson utterly fails to mention that he's spent two years treating patients in a war zone, or that he's been away from home for years. Maiwand was a distinctly ugly battle, with the Afghan troops outnumbering the British about 10 to 1, and nearly half of the British force became casualties. The Berkshires with whom Watson served accounted for about a third of the fatalities and a fifth of the injuries.
There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a packhorse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.
Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England.
A gunshot wound hurts a LOT. So does a broken collar bone. Watson lands both in one go, on top of two years at war in freakin' Afghanistan – which, I will remind you, causes problems for the best modern military in the world. Oh, and he nicks a major artery and almost dies. And Peshawar? At least 100 miles away. Surely the guy deserves a break...
...oh wait, no. There's a glimmer of hope...and then he gets typhoid. 104-degree fevers, danger of ignominious death-by-diarrhea in the days before rehydration techniques, inability to eat, hallucinations, insomnia, convulsions, pain so bad they sometimes resort to morphine in the modern day.... For months. Plus, thinking he's about to die any second, for months.
I was despatched accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.
This picture (courtesy of here) will perhaps give you an idea of what being "despatched" on "the troopship Orontes" would be like. (It was a real ship of the time, actually, as you see from the links.) Again, remember the condition Watson was in, and that the trip took a month.
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel, and take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.
London looked a bit like this at the time. 11s 6d is, as well as I can convert it (based on numbers from 2002), 38 and a half modern pounds (or roughly $58). A silk top hat cost about 6 to 12s, if that gives you an idea.
In other words, Watson came home really messed-up physically, an orphan completely alone in the world in an enormous, dirty, crowded metropolis. He had no money, no occupation, and social life to distract him from any physical pain or PTSD. Later in A Study in Scarlet, in fact, he defends his fascination with his new roommate by saying "The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often I endeavoured to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself. Before pronouncing judgement, however, be it remembered how objectless was my life, and how little there was to engage my attention. My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavouring to unravel it." :( He's so very matter-of-fact, even when he does admit to his own misery.
Anyway, you see what I mean about leaving stuff out? Granted, his audience was more familiar with the context and implications, but still. And when you follow the implications of what it means that he so understates what had to be the most traumatic events of his life...it makes you take his descriptions of his own mental status in the stories (or lack thereof) with a grain of salt. I like to give Watson the credit he doesn't give himself. ♥
All right. I'm off! Katie and I are visting![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gingerwall for the next couple of days. I am leaving my laptop and bringing books. There will probably be drinking, movie-watching, and general town-painting of the crimson variety. \o/! We drive back in the day before our birthday (Wednesday the 10th), then claudiagray is in town on the 11th, and then SXSW STARTS ON THE 12TH WHOOOOOOO!
It's looking to be a good week, is what I'm saying. :D
1. Very important observation, this one: Jude Law is a damn good-looking man, even when he's covered in dust/mud/blood/etc. (Maybe especially then, because it makes his eyes stand out all the more.) Also, I don't know how he did it, but he made his face look Russian. I'm not sure how that's possible, but somehow, he made it happen.
2. Rachel Weisz is a damn good-looking woman. I think I would like more films where she is a sniper, thank you. She's also exceedingly likeable; I have yet to see a film in which I didn't like her character, even when there were things I didn't like about the character. That's a great quality.
3. Holy shit, that one scene where they have semi-public mostly-clothed sex in the factory while everyone else is sleeping/unaware and they can't talk or make any noise? GUH. Unbelievably hot. *fans self*
4. Ed Harris's character was a bastard, but I do love me a competent antagonist. I sorta wish they hadn't taken him to the child-killer place; IMO, the story was more interesting when he told the kid to stay home and left him out of it. But then again, I'm biased toward making villains a little sympathetic, thereby to make their villainy the more awful.
5. I admit...I am now left imagining Afghanistan-era Dr. John Watson. And it's not even all Jude Law's fault; the same thing happened to me after the "Bastogne" episode of Band of Brothers, because, well, Doc Roe (♥ he's my favorite!).
You know, the way Watson describes his Army career in A Study in Scarlet is very misleading. While one of Watson's charms is the humility that keeps him from talking about himself all the time – or much at all – seeing as many in his position would exaggerate their own importance in the events, his incredibly understated descriptions of his own actions are terribly misleading. This is one of the reasons I find Jude Law's depiction so enjoyable; he makes Watson a real person, and in a way that's true to the kind of man who would tone himself down so much in his narratives, but whose character still shows through by the things he does and the company he keeps. I ascribe to the idea that Watson, while a faithful chronicler of Holmes and his cases, is not as faithful chronicling himself. He errs on the side of too little information and too little credit for himself. Watson also doesn't cop to it in the same way that he would admit to leaving out other information (out of respect for the clients or the sensitivity of the details or whatever), which probably accounts for a lot of the adaptation decay you see in portrayals of Watson.
(Okay, I admit, I find the dissection of Watson's narration geekily fascinating. Getting to the point now...)
The opening of A Study in Scarlet is a prime example. Because Watson describes the action succinctly and doesn't describe the passage of time, I came away from reading it with the impression that events progressed one after another in a short period. This, however, is so totally not the case. Perhaps it might be best to go through the text in little bits and give context and elaboration.
Watson opens:
In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army.
We don't know how old Watson is in 1878. As far as I know, there aren't any references to his age in canon, but I can speculate. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself was only about 26 when he wrote A Study In Scarlet (published when he was 28). He took his medical degree at the age of 22; according to some obituaries I read, this was about typical, although some managed an M.D. by 20. Anyway, let's call Watson 22, because he's a vaguely Doyle-shaped author-insert anyway.
So 22-year-old John Watson graduates, presumably in June. He joins the Army and studies through the summer.
Next:
Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy's country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.
I think it's important to note that as far as I can tell, the British were not involved in any major conflicts in the summer of 1878. The last major war had ended six years earlier. British troops occupied its colonies, but weren't generally holding pitched battles.
This means that Watson joined a peacetime army. He likely had no notion of being sent off to a front almost immediately after joining up and training. In fact, he leaves England expecting to be stationed in India. Can you imagine arriving with that expectation and instead having to dive into a major war? The Second Anglo-Afghan War kicked off in September of 1878. Watson had been in the army three months.
Also, if you take the time to look at a map, you will notice that there is quite a lot of distance between Bombay (now called Mumbai) and Candahar (now spelled Kandahar) – about 1000 miles of it (1500 km). There are also a number of large mountains in the way, and the "passes" Watson so casually refers to look like this. Or this. And it may also be enlightening to remember that the Northumberland Fusiliers were an infantry regiment, which by definition means that they were on foot.
Gosh, that sounds fun.
The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster.
Translation: "After a super-long hike, I got to be a doctor dropped into the middle of a war where the enemy has swords that can do things like shear off part of a man's skull [which happened to the real doctor from the First Anglo-Afghan War that people speculate Doyle used as inspiration for Watson]. Oh, and they have guns, too. And then, my luck got really bad..."
I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand.
"Removed from my brigade" seems a pretty innocuous statement, right? Of course, depending on when it happened (and from the way Watson phrases it, I think it wasn't long before the battle), this probably means that Watson was separated from all the people he knew and had befriended up to this point, and was stuck with an entirely different lot of soldiers. Most of whom promptly died horribly.
The Battle of Maiwand was fought on July 27th, 1880, almost two years after the war started. You'll note that Watson utterly fails to mention that he's spent two years treating patients in a war zone, or that he's been away from home for years. Maiwand was a distinctly ugly battle, with the Afghan troops outnumbering the British about 10 to 1, and nearly half of the British force became casualties. The Berkshires with whom Watson served accounted for about a third of the fatalities and a fifth of the injuries.
There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a packhorse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.
Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England.
A gunshot wound hurts a LOT. So does a broken collar bone. Watson lands both in one go, on top of two years at war in freakin' Afghanistan – which, I will remind you, causes problems for the best modern military in the world. Oh, and he nicks a major artery and almost dies. And Peshawar? At least 100 miles away. Surely the guy deserves a break...
...oh wait, no. There's a glimmer of hope...and then he gets typhoid. 104-degree fevers, danger of ignominious death-by-diarrhea in the days before rehydration techniques, inability to eat, hallucinations, insomnia, convulsions, pain so bad they sometimes resort to morphine in the modern day.... For months. Plus, thinking he's about to die any second, for months.
I was despatched accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.
This picture (courtesy of here) will perhaps give you an idea of what being "despatched" on "the troopship Orontes" would be like. (It was a real ship of the time, actually, as you see from the links.) Again, remember the condition Watson was in, and that the trip took a month.
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air -- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel, and take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.
London looked a bit like this at the time. 11s 6d is, as well as I can convert it (based on numbers from 2002), 38 and a half modern pounds (or roughly $58). A silk top hat cost about 6 to 12s, if that gives you an idea.
In other words, Watson came home really messed-up physically, an orphan completely alone in the world in an enormous, dirty, crowded metropolis. He had no money, no occupation, and social life to distract him from any physical pain or PTSD. Later in A Study in Scarlet, in fact, he defends his fascination with his new roommate by saying "The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often I endeavoured to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself. Before pronouncing judgement, however, be it remembered how objectless was my life, and how little there was to engage my attention. My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavouring to unravel it." :( He's so very matter-of-fact, even when he does admit to his own misery.
Anyway, you see what I mean about leaving stuff out? Granted, his audience was more familiar with the context and implications, but still. And when you follow the implications of what it means that he so understates what had to be the most traumatic events of his life...it makes you take his descriptions of his own mental status in the stories (or lack thereof) with a grain of salt. I like to give Watson the credit he doesn't give himself. ♥
All right. I'm off! Katie and I are visting
gingerwall for the next couple of days. I am leaving my laptop and bringing books. There will probably be drinking, movie-watching, and general town-painting of the crimson variety. \o/! We drive back in the day before our birthday (Wednesday the 10th), then claudiagray is in town on the 11th, and then SXSW STARTS ON THE 12TH WHOOOOOOO!It's looking to be a good week, is what I'm saying. :D
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-08 12:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-10 06:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-25 03:44 pm (UTC)1000 miles is like hiking from Austin to Denver. On foot.
Also, the Berkshires had a 62% casualty rate.
WATSON. ;__;
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-26 09:18 pm (UTC)Aww, thank you! ♥
1000 miles is like hiking from Austin to Denver. On foot.
Also, the Berkshires had a 62% casualty rate.
OUCH. D:
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-30 02:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-02 10:58 pm (UTC)I also love that I linked to this, and you felt compelled to re-read it. Again. ♥
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-02 11:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-02 11:59 pm (UTC)