Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Our Mother’s House
(Dir. Jack Clayton) (1967) This is a film of definite morbid interest, the kind of dark, small, quiet, quintessentially English film we’ve come to expect from Dirk Bogarde. Here he is the totally useless dad, Charlie Hook, who answers a letter from one of his children (at least, we think it’s his), living together (all eight of them), in their late mother’s house. What happened to mum? Well, she was ill and passed on, you see, “gone to join Jesus,” so naturally they buried her in the garden. And continue cashing her welfare cheques. Their scheme to ‘carry on’ is subverted…
Continue Reading →Wuthering Heights
(by Emily Brontë) (1847) It is, maybe, the greatest novel of them all: passionate; intransigent, mystical, sui generis. Wuthering Heights is where heaven and hell combine, and it outdoes either. It is mythical, whilst at the same time, prosaically real. It is made eternal by the art of Emily Brontë, and her characters, Heathcliff and Catherine, whose afterlife-marriage stoked the fires of romanticism that still flicker in our post-modern age. (Indeed, is Heathcliff the Humbert Humbert of that earlier age? As Joyce Carol Oates observed, “Heathcliff’s true bride is Death.”) He is a cruel man, with some reason, but he develops humanity of a sort over the course…
Continue Reading →“The Greatest Fightback Since Gunga Din”
"I might rest on some laurels after that."(painting by Ramon Marti-Alsina, Montserrat)
1986 Escort Cup: Glenelg 12.7 (79) Sturt 11.12 (78) Whilst the Tigers had had a lot of footy, this March night (more like a slow Tuesday evening than the weekend, or so it seemed) they looked more than tired – they looked bored. It was the off-season competition, in front of 5,000 odd fans. At quarter time, Sturt led 2.3 to 1 goal; at half time, the Double Blues led 6.4 to 2.4, but in the third quarter, Sturt kicked 5.5. to zip, to lead by 59 points. Willmott at full forward had kicked twice as many goals on…
Continue Reading →The Last Supper
"the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table.'
Milan, 1999, 28 MAY Leonardo’s The Last Supper was restored this day to public view after 22 years of restoration, roughly 501 years after the great artist completed it. You can clamber over the crowds and see this acme of Renaissance fusion (christian myth and enlightenment art) at Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan, a scene recounted in the books Matthew and John, where Jesus, looking serene after a tasty lunch, gives all the apostles indigestion with his infamous accusation. Leonardo (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was not only a polymorphous genius, he was also reputedly quite crafty. All the…
Continue Reading →Prisoners
(Dir Denis Villeneuve) (2013) A disclaimer is probably in order – The Varnished Culture has spent quite a bit of time, trouble and ingenuity avoiding Hugh Jackman. That’s right: we’ve managed to dodge his horse-opera, Australia; we’ve shied away from his faux opera, Les Misérables; we contrived to avoid Wolverine’s psychotic clutches in the 900 odd versions of X-men in which Hugh has appeared. And if we are to watch Professor Van Helsing tackle Count Dracula, we’ll take Edward Van Sloan, thanks. As a matter of fact, we recall seeing Hugh only once before, as a very shadowy character in Scoop, in which he was,…
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