Moonrise Kingdom

I had an uncomfortable feeling watching Moonrise Kingdom - the new film by Wes Anderson that is likely to be nominated as one of the best films of 2012 at the Oscars soon. Anyone watching would, of course, be charmed by his gentle retro Americana, and the feeling that Anderson would be a swell guy to make a movie of one's own remembrances of youth and innocence. Look closer, and one senses that this Kingdom is not one of the blind, but of the winking: this is Lolita without Humbert Humbert, Henry V without Falstaff, and Night of the Hunter without a killer (just a Social Services harpy). It is in fact, a pedophiliac film - if one can say that by way of description, not denunciation - or rather, an aestheticised fetishisation of pre and borderline pubsecent sexuality in the 1960s - that opens with music by Benjamin Britten, the known child-lover, and a sequence of shots of a Lolitaesque girl-child, gazing through bincoulars in a staged manner. The whole mise-en-scene is artifice incarnate - and while the delightful story of an orphan who rescues a lost girl, and is in turn rescued by his loyal band of boy-men, and a father-figure, is exciting (with the storm as a looming menace, and lightning as the finger of the heavens) - one cannot help but read the sub-text, which is that the adults have lapsed into disatisfied asexual or barely sexual lives, repressed and dowdy - while the two young lovers (married no less as children) have, in their post-coital tent, their native bay (they go native), found a postlapsarian shangri-la of concupiscence. So, let copulation thrive, is the leer. I don't mind this per se - but the dialogue is stiff, and the characters cut outs. The style of the film, and its daring unspoken motifs are impressive, but beneath the bearskin is something cold and threadbare.

- Todd Swift

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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