Susan Hill's 'I'm the King of the Castle'

***SPOILER ALERT: ENTIRE PLOT AND DENOUEMENT REVEALED***

It’s fairly easy to identify what makes a film work, particularly when that film is a mainstream Hollywood movie. In this blog, I’ve talked a bit about superhero movies and how these tend to use a limited number of ingredients. I think it’s not for nothing that a whole language of scriptwriting has developed which refers to some stock devices in films, such as the need for a ‘Third Act’.

Of course, there are many novels that mimic the structure of a mainstream film – some of these one feels that the author has even had half an eye to being adapted for the screen.

But I’d argue that novels are (generally) more sophisticated and complex than mainstream films, and that anyone wanting to unpick a novel, and ask ‘how do novels work’ is in for a tougher challenge than just putting the latest Marvel comics movie under the microscope.

My own opinion is that books are more effective because they stimulate the reader’s imagination in a way that doesn’t happen on film where everything is presented in ready-made visual form to the audience. Indeed, the most effective films are those which still leave something to the audience’s imagination. Think of any effective horror or suspense film.

In novels, the structure is often not so heavily dependent on external events /plot as it is on the exploration or development of character. As an extreme, think of ‘To the Lighthouse’ where the novel focuses exclusively on the interiority of its characters. Virginia Woolf reverses the standard approach by spending most of the novel describing the ebb and flow of her characters’ thoughts during a Summer’s day. Events which might normally serve as the main subject of a novel (a war, the death of one of the main characters) she relegates to a middle section of about five pages.

All of which is meant as a caveat to the following analysis. I can’t really do justice to Susan Hill’s ‘I’m the King of the Castle’, as it’s a complex and subtle work, which – like all good novels- resists attempts to reduce it to its constituent parts. So I’ll try not to take it apart, but rather to suggest a few ways it’s put together.

For those who haven’t read it, it’s about two boys thrown together by circumstances, and the bullying that takes place between them, with Hooper the tormentor and Kingshaw the victim. The novel begins with Kingshaw coming to stay in Hooper’s house accompanied by his mother, who has applied for the job of housekeeper, and the novel ends when the persecution has driven Kingshaw to such extremes that he takes his own life. So there’s a natural span to the action of novel.

The novel is given structure by the rhythms and dynamics of the relationship between the two boys as they get to know each other, or rather as they metaphorically circle each other, and as Hooper finds ever more ingenious ways of getting under Kingshaw’s skin.  The action is mostly confined to the house, which lends the novel a certain claustrophobia  (emphasis is given to the house at the beginning of the novel because we learn that it represents something quite ambiguous for Mr Hooper in its connection with his own father). But the action is also punctuated by various events such as Kingshaw’s aborted attempt to run away, and by a day out to the ruins of a castle and then, near the end of the novel, by a visit to the circus.

The novel charts how Kingshaw’s metaphorical escape routes are gradually but systematically closed off – either intentionally (as in Hooper’s case) or otherwise. Kingshaw can’t run away without Hooper following. To have his own privacy he has to continually evade Hooper, but knowing that Hooper will eventually discover which room he’s locked himself into – and Hooper frequently reminds Kingshaw that he is a guest (or worse) in his house. Kingshaw feels that Hooper will always win, whatever the situation.

What starts as a fixed period of time before Kingshaw can go back to school and be free of Hooper changes into a more dreadful prospect – the decision to send Kingshaw to the same school as Hooper, where Hooper can marshall other bullies to prey on Kingshaw. At the same time, the marriage between their respective single parents changes Kingshaw’s stay to a permanent one, and therefore removes any hope of a change in his situation.

The reader feels it wouldn’t be quite so bad were Kingshaw actually listened to by either of the parents. But the adults either willfully misunderstand him, or lack perception to interpret what is going on around them – dismissing his complaints as just a ‘boy thing’. For a short time in the novel, Kingshaw finds a genuine escape and enjoyment in his friendship with Fielding because this is something that he can keep to himself, only for Kingshaw’s Mum to unintentionally intrude on that as well.

One of Kingshaw’s final acts in the novel is to go into Hooper’s bedroom, tear down the battle plans Hooper is so fond of, take them outside, and tear them up into tiny pieces and burn them. It’s less a decision to act or fight back as it is the ultimate admission of powerlessness in that it expresses a terrible frustration that has no other outlet or hope for relief. Indeed, Hill’s decision to have Kingshaw burn the scraps of paper is effective in that it doubles as an act of provocation to Hooper, and also as an act of concealment – ie burning away the evidence of what he’s done. Kingshaw’s decision to drown himself in the wood is moving – and perhaps inevitable – because the pool of water is the one place he has recently managed to find any sense of freedom.

The tension created in the book is all the more effective because of the moments of reprieve that Hill allows her character. There are moments where Kingshaw thinks things might after all be ok (incidentally mirroring his mother’s expressed hope that they will all be a family, and that ‘things will be ok’). He proves himself resourceful and a clear thinker in the storm that reduces Hooper to a quivering wreck. At the time there seems every prospect that the role reversal in the wood where Kingshaw takes charge will defuse the situation back at home. The fact it does no such thing somehow makes the return to the status quo all the more chilling.

Kingshaw also finds temporary relief in his friendship with Fielding which is formed during the time Hooper spends in hospital. Kingshaw’s initial suspicion of Fielding shows how far Hooper has got under his skin in encouraging a distrust of others. There’s a scene where Kingshaw explains his problems to his new friend, and you really feel that this human contact might be a watershed moment and that Fielding might be able to suggest ways of dealing with Hooper that will defuse the situation. But ultimately Hooper’s influence pollutes this friendship as well.

The relationship between Hooper and Kingshaw has a certain symmetry about it which I think acts as a kind of glue for the novel. It’s not just that both boys have lost a parent, and are grieving about this or are both prey to related fears and nightmares. For instance, in the wood Hooper hits his head and becomes unconscious at risk of drowning in the water nearby, in way that prefigures Kingshaw’s own actual drowning at the end of the book. Also the two near-fatal /fatal events in the novel (Hooper’s fall from the masonry, and Kingshaw’s drowning) although caused indirectly by the other boy, are both self-inflicted.

As an aside, the fall from the castle wall is particularly impressive in that Kingshaw has the thought that he could just push Hooper off and kill him, and is sorely tempted to do so but doesn’t, only for Hooper to misinterpret Kingshaw’s innocent arm movement as a sinister one, resulting in him losing balance and falling anyway. There’s something here that reminds me of Dostoevsky – where a character thinks of a murderous act which he could quite easily have gone ahead with, decides not to, only for the results of that act to occur anyway, and in such a way as to make him look guilty after all. As another aside, it’s satisfying that Hill has this key scene take place at a literal castle, in reference to the title.

And finally there’s an interesting contrast in the reactions of first Kingshaw to Hooper’s supposed death, and then at the end of the book, Hooper’s reaction to Kingshaw’s actual drowning. Kingshaw has the perfectly normal human response of utter devastation at thinking he may have caused his tormentor’s death. By contrast Hooper’s first (and only stated) reaction at the end of the book is to feel pride that it is actually him who has brought about his victim’s death.

This is the same author who brought us ‘The Woman in Black’. So if you’re interested in hearing about her ideas on ghost stories, I”d recommend a Christmas ‘Start the Week’ programme on Radio 4 where she discusses this with Claire Tomalin (among others).

At the time of writing the programme can be downloaded at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018b63r 

Ridley Scott's 'Alien': It’s all about the Cat

*** Warning: Contains Spoilers for Alien, and the sequel Aliens***

Well, actually, 'Alien' is all about the suspense. We’ll come to the cat later.

Much of the appeal of the first film comes from not even knowing what the ‘Alien’ of the title refers to – although it’s easy to lose sight of that fact with the endless sequels and spin-offs that have been spawned over the years, and have made us very familiar with the look (and modus operandi) of the ‘Alien’.

So it takes half the film before we actually catch a glimpse of the Alien, and understand that it’s intending to destroy the whole crew.... a lesson that James Cameron’s Aliens sequel employs to similar effect when he delays the first big on-screen encounter with the aliens until halfway through the film

The opening sequence of 'Alien' makes clear that a danger or threat exists, but without defining the precise nature of that threat. In the first minute or so the camera pans through a seemingly empty (and enormous) spacecraft, and the unsettling music makes it clear that something isn’t quite right. Blinking monitors reflect on the visors of two space suit helmets (is someone inside that suit, we wonder, and if so, why are they not moving – are they dead?), and the ship appears to be running itself seemingly without anyone being on board - a bit like the Marie Celeste. First-time viewers are also presumably wondering whether this is, in fact, the ‘after’ of the story, and whether the rest of the story will be told in flashback.

To boldly go ...

For the first half of the film, I think interest is created partly by the understanding that ‘something is going to happen’ - this film is called ‘Alien’ after all! But also, quite simply, by the re-imagining of space travel. This isn’t pioneer space exploration as we’ve experienced in Star Trek; the crew of the Nostromo are simply doing a job moving cargo through space. The characters on board express no wonder at the technology around them, or at being out in space, or at coming out of a hibernated sleep. I like the way almost every early scene has someone clutching a coffee mug, or eating, or smoking which gives an informality to these scenes. Perhaps the fact these characters are entirely at ease with their space surroundings and each other makes us feel the opposite, and that this is all rather “alien” to us. Even the names of the characters are odd and therefore suggestively futuristic – Ripley, Ash, Kane.

I liked the way we experience the characters as a team at the beginning – to the extent that it’s difficult to keep track of all the different people and what their role is on the ship. It’s certainly not clear that any one of these people is destined to survive and become the hero /heroine of a 4-film franchise!

I always knew Bilbo was an android....

Of course, there are some pointers to the fact that Ripley is likely to survive – or indeed, that she has earned the right to survive. It’s clear that at crucial stages of the drama, Ripley stands firm and makes the correct call when others senior to her do not, and also that she thinks for herself. It’s Ripley who translates the distress signal, and realizes it is, in fact, a warning. It’s Ripley alone who refuses to let the alien on board – a decision that Ash overrides with calamitous results. It’s Ripley who decides they should leave the ship and blow it up, and it’s Ripley who keeps her head, and tries to stop the self-destruct when she realizes the alien is blocking her route to the escape shuttle. But, crucial to maintaining suspense, Ripley’s inevitable survival is only clear in retrospect. Once it’s clear the alien will pick them off one by one, it’s not certain who or how many of the crew will survive.

Which brings us to the cat, Jonesy.

New Alien franchise: Alien versus Jonesy the cat??

The cat performs a number of roles in the story. He’s used as a diversion in an early ‘false alarm’ scene. Ripley and Parker detect motion on their gizmo, only to find it’s Jonesy. When the cat runs off, Brett follows it, thereby separating himself from the group – and inevitably it’s at this point he’s killed by the alien. When Jonesy hisses, initially we think he’s reacting to Brett, when of course he’s reacting to the alien behind him. So, the cat acts as a cipher to the killing.

Jonesy is also used as a plot device at the denouement – Ripley risks her life by going back to fetch him, then runs into the ‘alien’, drops the cat cage, and runs back to try and stop the self-destruct countdown.

But I’d say the cat performs a role that’s central to the emotional journey of the film. Imagine the very last scene, when Ripley has destroyed the alien, but without the cat being there. The emphasis of the scene would then be on the fact all of Ripley’s colleagues and friends are dead, and she is left alone – which might feel like a kind of defeat. But the way the it's actually written, Ripley isn’t alone – she has the cat who, like herself, has survived against the odds. I think of the cat as being a bit like the crew’s mascot, and that therefore for the cat to survive means that Ripley has truly defeated the alien because something of the crew has survived.

And the writers have clearly invested some importance in the animal surviving. When Ripley drops the cat cage and runs off, there’s a great camera shot of the alien turning to the cat and baring its teeth in a grin. The implication is that it’s about to kill the cat too, and so it’s quite satisfying from a plot structure point of view when it turns out that this is not the case, and the animal has, surprisingly, survived.

Not a cat

Enough about the cat!

Ok – so the film might well have worked without having a cat in it. In fact, when I re-watched Alien recently, I realised I’d completely forgotten there’d even been one in it!

But I’d argue that the character of ‘Newt’ in Aliens performs a similar role – much of the drama and emotional impetus is derived from Ripley’s protection and defence of this 11-year old girl (a situation made all the more emotive due to the fact Ripley’s own 11-year old daughter is dead). Again, imagine 'Aliens' without the girl’s character. It would become a much flatter story, and reduce the action to something more like ‘Return of the Living Dead’ where characters are picked off one by one. If you were being cynical, you might suggest these ‘cypher’ characters /cats are introduced simply to simulate an emotional depth that would otherwise be lacking.

But I think the reason why Alien works better than its sequels is partly because there is in fact more emotional depth to the story. Ripley is a character who thinks first about others. She acts in the crew’s interest by challenging Ash’s conclusions about the distress signal; she goes back to rescue the cat at the end; and when she assumes command of the ship, her priority is to make sure the alien is killed and the remaining crew members escape.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that they ‘break contract’ with the audience at the beginning of Alien 3, by killing the entire crew who survived Aliens, just to extend the action to another sequel.

The Killing: Getting away with Murder?

***Spoiler alert: plot and identity of murderer revealed***

The annual Danish 'Who can look the moodiest' competition 

The Killing is such a good piece of TV, if you haven’t watched it already, I would really recommend you read no further.

Twenty hour-long episodes is a long time to keep interest going. So, how do the writers keep us watching and tuning in for next time (or reaching for the next DVD in the box set)?

One obvious technique they use is that they have multiple prime suspects. Well, you don’t need me to tell you that if you’ve watched it! We lose count of the number of times the murderer’s identity seems clear and the crime solved, only for Lund to work out some new angle which casts her previous assumptions into doubt.

We suspect first Nanna's teacher, then Troels Hartman, then the other politician, Jens, then Vagn, then the taxi driver character, and finally Vagn again. And those are just the main suspects.

Crucially both the teacher and Troels remain prime suspects much longer than they need because both have alibis they are unwilling to reveal – indeed, it seems they would prefer to be suspected of the murder, or even arrested, to protect their secret. Subsequently it’s revealed that the teacher was helping someone escape from an arranged marriage, and that Troels had actually attempted suicide on the night in question, and that both men respectively wanted to keep these facts a secret. Neither of these alibis fully account for their reluctance to reveal all. In real life, of course, each suspect would give their alibis much earlier – but then this is just a story, and there would be much less dramatic interest in everyone being up front and honest.

The writers create further dramatic interest with the situations that develop around the respective prime suspects. For instance, Lund being alone with Troels and looking through his diary when he might come back into the room at any second.  Or by having Troels arrested right in the middle of an all-important Council meeting. Or by having the teacher go in to school and being spat at by his pupils. Or when he’s beaten up by the father, egged on by Vagn when we know he’s innocent.

In which I make a spurious reference to a much loved 1980s icon ..... 

The writing is very clever in that it never definitively commits to anything. The writers get away with having their cake and eating it. Someone you felt was beyond suspicion could become the prime suspect; someone who had previously been cleared could be back in the frame. Watching the series reminded me of a Rubiks cube. I felt the writers could take the story this way, or they could just as easily take it that way. The different combinations and sequences of combinations were almost limitless. Is the Police chief hiding something? Is Lund taken off the case because there is some wider conspiracy at work? Is Troels’s girlfriend Rie playing him?

Because a Rubiks cube would have been just too obvious...

No character ever seems to be able to definitively rule themselves out, even though you'd imagine this would be perfectly straightforward for them to do. For instance, Jens does a very good job of behaving like a serial killer when he ties Lund up, and plays games with her – he even ties Lund up using the same material that the murderer used on the victim. Is this really how someone would react when their involvement in a hit and run has been discovered? Just before he’s killed he says something helpfully ambiguous – not ‘I didn’t kill her’ but something like ‘I could never have killed her’.

'What's my motivation again?'

And that’s a key point.At least three of the characters die before the police can get the complete story. Jens is killed before he can be brought in for questionning, the taxi driver character hangs himself, and Vagn is killed after confessing to Theis.  I would argue that it is necessary for the writers to kill off these characters before they’re able to give the police the full story – because this smooths over inconsistencies and implausibility about the details of the story which would come to light in any lengthy confession to the Police.

My reading of the murder is that it was carried out on the spur of the moment for racist reasons. But throughout the series, we were led to believe the murderer was a serial killer. So, we have a serial killer murdering on the spur of the moment acting from a racist motivation – when none of his previous crimes had anything whatsoever to do with race. Hmm… doesn’t quite add up to me.

I would argue that The Killing is best appreciated as a game or as a diversion rather than as a representation of ‘reality’. It’s a game where there are certain rules. The main rule is that the murderer should be someone obvious but not someone we’ve seriously suspected – a difficult combination to pull off. In fact they do this very cleverly with Vagn. The scene where he’s arrested for the murder is directed to make it seem like the police have got the wrong man, as the taxi driver character is busy hiding in the corner looking guilty.  When Vagn is released, the writers create more of a smokescreen by having Pernille and Theis effectively throw him out the house. This engages our sympathies for Vagn in a way that stops us thinking any more about his potential guilt. There’s no better way of diverting the viewer’s suspicions than by having a character arrested, particularly when the arrest happens a few episodes before the end. Besides, this is Vagn! Dopey, reliable, simple Vagn!

Spurious reference to Bill Hicks coming up...

A final thought - it's just a ride..... 

I would argue that The Killing is very good at creating tension and keeping us guessing about what's really going on.  But the feverish excitement generated is never fully matched – can never possibly be matched – by the eventual revelation of the killer’s identity. Then again, I think The Killing should be watched to enjoy the ride, rather than to get to the destination.