MovieChat Forums > Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1998) Discussion > A Merry War . . . Or

A Merry War . . . Or

posted 21 years ago by neckert7
13 replies | jump to latest

Helena Bonham Carter plays a woman in love with a man who for the majority of the movie makes you want to give him a good hard slap.

I think that alternate title for this movie sums the story up in a nutshell. I watched this movie because I like Helena Bonham Carter so very much. The problem is with the character of Gordon Comstock, the man she loves.

Gordon is a talented "jingle" writer for an advertising agency. His boss likes him, and the aforementioned Bonham Carter plays a woman who loves him. His older sister dotes on him. He's even got a rich friend who helps him get a small collection of poems published.

To say that Gordon lets his literary success go to his head would be an understatement. He quits his job and sets out trying to become next Byron, or Shelly, or whatever. The rest of the movie is about how he learns that while there may be nothing wrong with being poor, there's nothing particularly right about it either.

The whole movie is pretty much given up to one scene after another of Gordon making a jackass out of himself until he finally knocks his girlfriend up --why she would have put up with his behavior boggles the mind-- and returns to the advertisement agency and lives happily ever after.

In short, Gordon is the sort of person who makes me mad because he doesn't appreciate the good fortune that he has. His friends cut him breaks that I doubt anyone would in real life. By the time of the end, I almost felt like shouting at the screen to the lovely Helena Bonham Carter, "Hey, ditch that idiot. I'll treat and love you the way you deserve!"

But then I remembered I was just watching a movie. Oh, well.

[–] doris_gets_her_oats 20 years ago

I haven't actually seen this film, I have just finished reading the book by George Orwell and typed in a google search to read a bit about it and this was one of the first things that came up. I was actually quite surprised that it is a film at all, considering the nature of the novel. The novel does not focus too deeply on a great number of events and spends much more time expressing Gordon's feelings- mainly about society's obsession with money and "making do" in the world. It's a shame to hear that in the film he is such an irritating character. He is irritating in the book, too, because of his constant pessimism and preoccupation with money (it is surely mentioned at LEAST once a page?), but at the same time you can feel sympathy towards him (not that he would like you to, of course), and have somewhat of an emotional connection with him. I can see that as a film character, that connection would most likely be completely lost. However, as I have not seen this film, I cannot pass judgement!

The change of name is really terrible, though. "A Merry War" doesn't have the same kick to it.

[–] 20 years ago

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[–] lilleblomst 19 years ago

The book is called Keep The Aspidista Flying, therefore I think it is a fitting title.

[–] zoerpit 15 years ago

(1) The American title presumably is taken from Shakespeare's "Much Ado about Nothing," Act I, Scene 1, line 62, where Leonato says, "You must not, sir, mistake my niece [Beatrice]. There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her. They never meet but there's a skirmish of wit between them."
(2) The title probably had to be changed for the U.S. because most Americans (I am one) don't know what an aspidistra is. (Well, I know what it is, but I didn't always, and you never hear the word used here.)

[–] KitMagic 20 years ago

Honestly, I thought that the main male character was a much more sympathetic
character than either of you did! (And I haven't read the book.)

I like the alternate title "Keep the Aspidistra Flying", it was one of the
(cute, silly) things that was said in the movie, and I think it also appeared
somewhere in the credits...it would be a good title for that story/movie, and
I didn't know that that actually IS its alternate title!

(Hey, at least they kept the line "Keep the aspidistra flying" in there...
they must've wanted to be at least SOMEWHAT true to the book! ^_^)

(Sometimes I forget which movie the title "A Merry War" goes with, and then
I just think, "Oh, yes, that one where they said, 'Keep the aspidistra flying'!")

Kit =^__^=
=^__^=

[–] 20 years ago

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[–] persistenceofvision 19 years ago

Saw this picture last night.

The end reminded me of the end of 'Down and out in Paris and London'. Every so often throughout DOPL Orwell reminds you that he's got a cousin who can fix him up with some money, so however low he sinks he's always got a get-out clause. Then at the end he decides he's had enough of being a bum and taps his cousin. And hey presto, his troubles vanish.

Comstock always has the option of going back to his old job. So when he has to return to the white-collar world and marry Helena BC, he just does, and he's welcomed back with open arms. At the end of the movie (haven't read the book) I didn't get the impression that he'd really changed at all. [In DOPL Orwell ends by saying how much the experience changed him.] The film keeps reminding you that there are loads of people leading hand-to-mouth existences (like those refugees who try to sell Comstock some old books, or the WW1 veteran with one leg he gives some money to); then at the end he just returns to immense wealth and forgets about them.

The end of this picture made me feel stiffed. I could take how obnoxious Comstock was for the most part because the film moved quickly and had loads of funny lines. But the end, with him cooing over the baby, I just felt was saccharine. And what was going on with that song they played over the end credits? Made me want to spew.

[–] neil_mc 19 years ago

I think the message of the film was that all middle-classes of the era were hypocritical tossers. All you hear from Comstock all the way through is how he doesn't want to conform and wants to be a 'free man'. Then the very last shot of the film is a backward pan to reveal a line of identical houses along the street, housing identical people, all spouting identical hypocritical BS.

"We're making a film here, not a movie."

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] The_Sweeney 16 years ago

And what was going on with that song they played over the end credits? Made me want to spew.

Agreed. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, but as you say the closing song was totally pathetic and unrelated. If you are going to have a song over the credits, at least choose one from the correct time period, the 1930s.

[–] daveyh (641) a year ago

I think an instrumental version of that song is played quite a bit during the movie.
Did anyone else catch the instrumental version of "call of the search" also playing (during Gordon's Lambeth and then 'rehabilitation' scenes)? Can't help feeling that would have been a more fitting song to play during the end credits, but maybe that's just because I'm more familiar with it (and maybe Mike Batt hadn't written the lyrics yet, as it's several years before Katie Melua released it)

[–] billr1953 16 years ago

I felt grant's character was such a childish guy that I really didn't care if he sold out or not.

however, perhaps Carter's character got knocked up on purpose, to facilitate his growing up. She knew him well enough that he would make the "honest woman" out of her, not let her "get rid of it"

‘And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.'

[–] daveyh (641) a year ago

in the book, it tells whole backstory of his childhood, his parents struggling and going into debt in order to keep up with their middle-class peers (a subject Orwell also talks about a lot in Road To Wigan Pier), feeling an outsider at school because he was one of the poorest there (and that it seemed to be hierarchical based on how much money each child's family had), his eccentric relatives, the family (and societal) pressure to "make good" (ie get a good job and earn money) and that with both himself and his sister childless and approaching middle age, it appears the Comstocks line would end with them - hence his line at the end of the movie about the Comstock's continuing, which had zero gravitas without that context.
More importantly, without the context of his backstory, it's difficult to explain why he does what he does. In the novel, he doesn't quit to become a serious writer/poet (I think he tells his boss that as his reason for leaving because he has to say something!), he does so because he's declaring "war on money" (hence the alternative title, A Merry War). It's also why he immediately squanders away the cheque from the American publishers.
Finally, finding out he's to be a father means giving up on his war on money and returning to the more conventional life. It wouldn't be fair on the child to be raised in that squalid flat when they could live in a comfortable home if only Gordon would give up his (Gordon's there by choice, the child wouldn't be), plus being an unmarried mother was looked down on then and he couldn't do that to her. To translate it to film, I guess they had to make the motives more simplistic.
The film's brilliantly acted, not that i'd expect anything less from the two leads, and it's great to see so many memorable scenes from the book played out, but I feel it works better as a companion piece to the book rather than as a coherent movie in its own right, because so much context is missing.