Medieval Movies: Attila

It's been a couple months now since my books on medieval Russia went into the shelf, thanks in part to an Eamon Duffy tangent. I happily concede to a D grade in my loose pursuit of the MIT Open Courseware class on "The Making of Russia in the Worlds of Byzantium, Mongolia, and Europe." D is for dilettante.

One of the things I found almost more interesting than reading about Rus were mentions about their pesky neighbors, such as the Pechenegs and various Mongol and Baltic tribes. Now I'm thinking about casting around for some reading on the Huns and Magyars. This is in part because Pavel and I watched the 2001 TV miniseries Attila on DVD this week. It ascends high on my list of favorite historically-based films.

I'm easy to please when it comes to these, I think. A few interesting cultural bits and good atmosphere, no really glaring historical inconsistencies, and some show of restraint in the Hollywoodization of the material is all I ask. "Attila" delivered on these, and had some excellent acting and good characterizations in the mix. My favorite portions, as usual, were the nerdy bits- the film artfully brought in Indo-European mythology (such as when Rua questions the young Attila about what animals are sacred), and there are a couple of fantastic folk dance scenes. I'm really interested to know what they based these on. Modern Hungarian folk dances, maybe? The circle dance at Attila's wedding reminded me of similar dances in Turkey, so it could be more Turkic. The series was shot in Lithuania, so maybe they just borrowed some local dances, since the word "Hun" was applied to a lot of tribes out of different backgrounds.

There is an impressive scene where Attila and his brother Bleda fight in a duel of horseback archery. What a gory way to die, but it made for an exciting film scene. This can't have been easy to either act or film, and the actors did a lot of their own horseback stunts, so bravo to Gerard Butler and Tommy Flanagan for that.

I have to say that I was skeptical at first of the Scots Attila, but by the time he was fighting the Visigoths, I had started to believe. And Gerry is kind on the eyes, in any case.



The female lead characters are predictable- you have your warrior maiden whose wild heart is tamed by Attila, and your misunderstood outcast witching woman. However, these were not overdone, and at least they split them into two people (as opposed to the warrior-lover-witch all in one package), which made for interesting tension and pathos. You also have the conniving female politicos in the form of the Roman women, notable here being Alice Krige who always gives a good performance.

However, I found the Romans sort of dull in this film. Maybe I've had too much of HBO's Rome for my own good (that's likely). Romans in film are a dime a dozen, but you don't get to see the Germanic tribes up close much, except as Roman arrow fodder. I wanted to see more of the Visigoths. Why did a Roman have Theodoric's daughter, for instance? No one ever really explained.

All in all, 4 shields. Er, stars.

Beyond Justification

I liked this paper's summary of the Orthodox view of salvation and how different it is from both Catholicism and Protestantism. Orthodoxy's "generous anthropology" has been one of the biggest revolutions in my thinking, a welcome one. The paper also explains well why the things that Christians in the West tear their hair out over just don't make a lot of sense when viewed from an Eastern Christian perspective. It's one thing which I think leaves many evangelicals with the mistaken impression that Orthodoxy is a niche religion, irrelevant, antiquated etc.- the Orthodox don't seem to be hitting the questions that other Christians think are really important. Because, well, to the Orthodox they aren't so much.

A bit long, but worth the read.

Out to the sea

A while back I posted a blurb on Patrick O'Brien's novels, a few of which I've been listening to on CD in my car. The reader that performs them for Recorded Books, Patrick Tull, is nothing short of amazing. If you've never heard of O'Brien's books, you probably have heard of or seen the movie Master and Commander. That was an amalgam of various stories from the Aubrey/Maturin series of his books, and a pretty good one in my estimation, though they do change stuff.

Second only to a good seafaring story is a good seafaring poem! I enjoy the poems of John Masefield. A good online collection of them can be found here, along with other sea-themed poetry. I think Masefield's are the best, though if you're in the right mood, Edgar Allen Poe's or Shakespeare's melancholy images are kind of cool.

Photo: HMS Rose, the ship used in the film Master and Commander and now renamed HMS Surprise in honor of it. It's in the San Diego Maritime Museum, which is on my list of places to visit when we get down there. Photo source here.

Boy howdy

As you may have heard on the news, we had a little shake on Monday evening, 5.6 centered in Alum Rock in north San Jose. I've experienced some wiggles both here and in Istanbul, but this was the strongest I'd ever been in. The first wave, I thought, "oh, earthquake," then as it got much stronger: "&^%$, EARTHQUAKE!" And it just kept going. We are on the second floor and I don't care who you are, it is weird to look at the walls of your house and see them swaying and shaking around.

Fortunately my California-born husband had presence of mind and told me to stay in the archway of the kitchen or get under the table. It's a small table and with me still in a big knee brace, the rafters would have been down before I'd have gotten under there. So we rode it out and thankfully had no breakage of property or of our persons. Some of my co-workers who were nearer the epicenter had glass damage.

I didn't get much sleep that night with the tremors going on all night- I counted three- and the next afternoon at work, we had another bigger rumble, a three-something-pointer at the same epicenter. I believe the locals when they say that compared to 1989 and other big ones, it was nothing, but I admit by that time I was thinking moving back to the East Coast doesn't sound bad.

In news of the fires last week: My brother and sister-in-law came home from their vacation to a house covered inside and out with ash, but still standing. The fire came as close as 2 miles and at one point the Santa Ana winds were hurricane-strength, preventing any attempt at fighting the blaze. It was only the shift of wind that spared their neighborhood. Thank God! It was dicey for them and for their small kids, but all in all it was probably good they were on vacation since they would have had to evacuate anyway.

Hm, I wonder what next week will bring?!