Any Human Heart Episode Three

by Courtney Hilden

I am usually sad to see a miniseries come to an end on Masterpiece Theater, Classics Edition, but here I found I was desperate to see this particular story, with increasingly wonky structure, no discernible meaning, and despicable characters, end, so then finally, blessedly, I would never have to revisit this work.

The first two episodes were relatively simple: Logan, the main character, moves between a netherworld where all his former selves reside, the story of his life, and then his old age self. Episode three found the story also moving between several stories of the older self (played by Jim Broadbent), and this became particularly confusing, as it wasn't exactly clear when things were happening. (When exactly, in the chronology, was Logan at the beach? He was suddenly in the cabin burning things, then we cut back to the beach scene, where he's drinking a beer and looking miserable.)

Midway through the episode, Logan asks himself "is my luck running out?" What I find myself wondering is when he ever had luck. His entire life was just one mistake after the next, and the fact that he spends his entire life thinking it's luck, when it's clearly all about the decisions he makes (and, the decisions other's make), his continued illusions just make him seem far too stupid. (The only thing easier to see through is the makeup that the various young actors had to put on.)

But all these things are tiny quibbles next to the various problems of the work as a whole, which I found myself struggling with. The place of women within the story was troublesome. Logan spends his entire life treating women poorly. He sleeps with women he knows are involved with his best friend, Peter. He marries two separate women because he wants to be in a relationship, not because he loves them. When one tells him she's divorcing him, he throws an abusive fit at her. He longs for children, but never to really be there or do anything remotely supportive, he just wants their love and affection, particularly the love and affection of female children, in what is an obviously creepy role. And then he sleeps with whatever he can. And yet, the work never passes any judgement on his poor behavior, never reveals the obvious misogyny and patriarchy that destroys several of these women's lives. If nothing else, it seems to revel in Logan's relationships with women, even depicting them as the underpinning of his life. But, of course, Logan's life is not about how much he loved these women, it's about a pathetic man too oblivious to realize how much harm he does and how treating women badly is impractical because it just leaves him feeling empty and hopeless, which just causes him to repeat the cycle of lovelessness all over. The work glorifying him as a model is problematic because there is nothing really good about him, just selfish, pathetic, or both.

The other troubling depiction is of the socialist collection Logan works for in this particular episode. Like other parts of this story, this just seems to be another way for the work to show how important its star is ("Look!" the works says. "There's the former King of England, there's the second World War, there's a reference to "Hills Like White Elephants." Please. Let's not pretend that this isn't just a cherry picking of historical events to make the audience feel as if somehow Logan is important, when the truth of someone's life within historical events is often far more complicated and rarely so involved in things only a Masterpiece Theater audience would be familiar with.) This socialist collective could have been fascinating, a critique of the collective's most anti-woman, racist leanings, which is vaguely danced around. Instead, it became a series of jokes, poorly made and apolitical. This miniseries might leave you to believe that the collective was ridiculous to have security measures, but the truth was that organizations like this were under constant watch from various governments, and they did work, through spies to infiltrate and disrupt their activities. (Whole books, yes, whole books, have been written on the subject, and yet this miniseries, with its dedication to HISTORY, is ignorant of them.) Two girls who engage in lesbian sex are depicted as evil, mean and stupid, and just another attempt to make lesbians villains. Moreover, this part of the episode totally brushes over what the collective was trying to do, making it into a silly game of silly young people, instead of important work to end oppression, work that still, in various ways, goes on today. It is an insulting depiction of activists. If you think that activists are unimportant, then clearly you haven't been paying attention to the work going on in Egypt.

Overall, the work was toggling between boring and offensive. I would much rather seen the life story of almost every female character than Logan, and I would have much rather seen historical events depicted in the way they happened, not from a reactionary, simplistic point of view. The only thing that I liked about this miniseries is that it is over and that, unlike say, Downton Abbey, there isn't talk of a second season.

The Ghost

by Courtney Hilden
Spoiler Alert!: The "twists" at the end of this film is revealed in this review.

The Ghost is about a woman, Margaret, whose husband, John Hitchcock, is slowly dying in 1910 Scotland. But don't think she's in despair about her husband. Margaret is having an affair with John's doctor, Dr. Charles Livingstone. Charles kills John, planning to run away with Margaret and John's money. Of course, John's money goes missing, which would probably be the biggest problem if it wasn't of course for all the creepy things going around the house at night.
The film hits all the Gothic cliches: dramatic music, creaking chain sounds, dark and stormy nights, people channeling the dead, blood appearing out of no where, secret passages. Charles even looks just like Edward Norton in The Illusionist. (Or maybe Norton's look was based on this film.)
There are lots of flaws in the film. Despite being set in Scotland, only one (small) character has a Scottish accent, Mr. Fisher. There's almost no mystery as to what is happening in the film. The audience knows the moment Catherine the maid is guaranteed her job for the rest of her life that she is obviously helping John's plan. John is clearly not dead and manipulating events so that Margaret will believe that Charles is betraying her, killing him in the process. It's no surprise when John shows up, telling Margaret the truth.
The best part of the film? Without a doubt Barbara Steele, a horror movie veteran by the time this film was made. Her eyes are large and expressive and she conveys each emotion crystal clear. She's a perfect example of the old acting mantra "acting is reacting."
The film is meant to scare people in more ways than one. It is common when someone is terminally ill for a spouse to cheat on them, though in the vast majority of cases the man cheats in a heterosexual coupling, not the wife. By making the wife the cheater in the story, it makes a moral judgment on women and their capacity of be faithful. The movie is on some level a criticism of women's desires, since that's apparently where the trouble is.
The only thing that might saves this movie is the ending, in which Margaret has her revenge. Neither John nor Charles is particularly appealing, and both come off an infants who demand her attentions. When John returns, he accidentally drinks poison, only to have Margaret taunt him with the antidote which she purposely spills in front of him. John slips behind the secret passage right as Scotland Yard arrives. Margaret is taken away as a murder (although she has only committed one murder, not two), and John dies, boarded up in his own house, his plan have fallen apart. No one really gets away with their behavior in this movie, three of the main characters dying and the fourth carted away to jail. Since Margaret is the only survivor, it leaves in question who is morally the most reprehensible: the cheaters or those who seek revenge.