The Cornish Coast Murder by John Bude

Here we have the classic sort of cozy murder mystery we all expect to be written in 1935 England: a murder takes place in a tiny coastal town that, up til the moment the corpse is discovered, had never experienced anything more criminal than a kid trespassing on someone's property to retrieve a ball. The local constable is WAY out of his depth and our sleuth is a vicar, Reverend Dodd, who spends every Thursday evening sharing his dinner table with Doctor Pendrill so they can eat a huge meal, drink vast quantities of wine, and then sit by a too hot fire while they discuss the latest batch of mystery novels that a lending library in Greystoke ships to them each Saturday. They assign themselves the task of reading all three before their Thursday dinner and then the vicar ships the books back, along with a list  requesting new ones, the next day. The doctor, usually busy with deliveries, deaths, farm implement or kitchen accidents and measles, reads them too quickly and forgets key details. The vicar, having nothing but time on his hands, reads them slowly, takes notes and looks for errors in the novel's plots. [This shared hobby gave both characters ample opportunity to comment on whether or not the real murder mystery they were about to be dropped into was anything like in the books: no, apparently, it wasn't as their murder was (they tell us, the REAL readers, repeatedly) WAY more convoluted, clever and mysterious--nothing any ORDINARY novelist would ever dream up.  That habit of turning to us in the audience and telling us that the story we are reading is one, damned amazing tale gets tiresome real fast.]

As the night wears on, a whopper of a storm hits the coast town and the doctor, fearing for his life as he thinks about driving home on the twisty dark roads, sets off early--they never finish discussing the books! The storm rages on all night and many, many times, the vicar tells us (as he stares out his windows to watch the lightning strikes) that there is NO WAY any human could survive being out on a night like this...

The next (sunny but soggy) day, the news breaks: Julias Tregarthan, the richest person in the county who lives in the largest house in the county is dead--shot once through the front of his head. Everyone's mind assumes suicide because what else could it be? No one in THAT town would murder anyone...Or would they? Claiming that he needed to "tend to the poor soul" the vicar manages to push his way into the house, into the crime scene and (!) is left alone with the body to...do something, I'm not sure what.  Since they aren't Catholic it can't be reading the final rights (and, anyway, the guy is already long dead).  Whatever, the local contables allow him to not only examine the body, the room AND HIS PERSONAL PAPERS, and they let him question all the people who were in the house the night before: his neice and two staff, the cook/cleaner and her husband who maintains the grounds and does maintenance ineptly. The cook is nervous and prone to hysterical outbursts. The maintenance man is an ugly drunk, sullen and defensive.  The neice is cool, wordless and conveniently faints whenever asked a pointed question and so spends much of the novel in her room recovering...or is she??

The scene of the crime is a large office with a massive desk facing a set of windows that overlook a narrow bit of garden that runs right up to a deadly cliffside with deadly rocks and a deadly surf far below.  There is one tiny hole in one of the office windows. The room was locked on the inside (the key in the old man's robe pocket), the windows were latched and the shutters closed up because of the storm.  It would appear that the old guy was going over financial papers at his desk (that's what he announced during dinner that he would be doing all night) but there were no papers on his desk. So what was he doing?  Being shot smack dab in the middle of his forehead, obviously.  But there is no gun in the room!!!  And three bullets were fired at him: one hit him in the conk and two went into the wall behind him. But that means all three were fired through the same tiny hole in the window! Is that even possible? And would a bullet make a tiny hole in window glass? The fact that the bullet hole was in his forehead and not the top of his head, means that he was facing the window--as if he was looking up from his work and at his murderer while being shot at. Wow, now we have a real head scratcher! How was he shot from the outside if the angle of the wound would require one to be level with the window, but the ground is 20 feet BELOW the window, and just beyond the window is a drop into the ocean? And if the murderer was locked out of the office and so shot him while floating above the sea, who stole the papers the uncle was working on? What we have here is way more mysterious and cunning than any murder mystery novel from Greystoke library, the vicar tells the doctor who agrees whole heartedly.

Let's meet the neice, Ruth, who is prone to fainting fits: Her parents (her father was the brother of her uncle) were wonderful and loving and she had the perfect childhood--so, they died.  She has since lived with her uncle who is "doing his duty" but is clearly not happy about it and he tells her that every dinner meal, informing her that (a) she should be grateful and (b) he has no intention of leaving her a SHILLING if she keeps seeing that good for nothing boyfriend Ronald. Ruth insists that Ronald means NOTHING to her and she is SHOCKED and APPALLED that the filthy minded uncle would think otherwise. Ruth has mastered the one thousand yard stare and sleep walks through life whenever uncle is around. But the question is: what does she get up to when he isn't looking?  Now, with him dead, the question on her mind is: Where the hell is Ronald and why hasn't he asked me to marry him like he said he would once the old bastard died?

The help: The groundskeeper/maintenance man, it turns out, drinks too much and gambles WAY too much. His wife knows they are drowning in debt and also knows him to be capable of just about anything once he "gets the wind up" because a heavy he owes money to has decided to collect--cash or a few fingers. She also knows that she cannot go through having to find the two of them ANOTHER job because he keeps messing things up so she'll do ANYTHING it takes to protect what they have. They both claim they were out of the house (she at her sister's and he at a pub far, far away with a name and location he can't recall) that night but a small window near the scullery has been broken into and the husband's muddy shoe prints were on the window sill and floor--OBVIOUSLY made during The Storm. (The vicar tricks the wife into admitting she had mopped the floor earlier that day.) 

The boyfriend, Ronald: Ronald insists that he and Ruth hadn't seen each other all day. Then he is presented with facts that force him to admit that, yes, they had seen each other briefly but they had separated LONG before The Storm and he had immediately driven out of town, MILES away from the scene of the crime. Then additional facts force him to admit that he and Ruth were together until just before the storm broke (they were angry/sad arguing at the end of the ridiculously long driveway) and then the neice walked back to the house, sobbing, getting there just as the heavens burst open--long after her uncle had been shot. According to Ruth, she ran into the house just after The Storm started, was soaking wet, and went right up to her room to change clothes and get dry and then lay on her bed until the next day. Meanwhile, Ronald was heading out of town. But that was a lie, too! Forced into a corner, Ruth admits she had gotten back to the house seconds before The Storm started and seconds after the gun fired--she saw the cook skulking around in the dark kitchen--and then Ruth went BACK OUTSIDE to wander around on the grounds just below the window with the bullet hole leaving the only foot prints in that past of grass! She insists she wasn't killing anyone but simply having a leisurely cigarette smoke as the rain bucketed down. Then she ran inside, went upstairs to change into dry clothes and to flop onto her bed in her room until the next day. Ronald then admits that he did NOT leave town but pulled his car over to the side of the road just past the end of the driveway, and then walked back to the house but, he insists, he didn't shoot anyone but simply wandered around on the OTHER side of the house and had a smoke in the pouring rain. Then a tramp who sees all says he saw Ruth early the next morning furtively sneaking around the grounds, retrieving gun from a shrub and then tossing it into the sea! So what the hell was going on and why was everyone sneaking around a house during the worst storm in human history getting up to all sorts of malarky except noticing a murderer firing a gun three times through a window? And did Ruth ever really lay on her bed recovering from faints or were those lies, too?

As if that isn't too much story getting in the way of the plot, a THIRD brother no one knew about (a deadbeat good for nothing who went off to Australia to escape the family on his 18th birthday) is mentioned in the dead guy's letters which reveal intense hostilities and THREATS exchanged between the the two! (The vicar finds them as he grants himself a free hand in the entire house during the middle of the night while the constable on guard dozes in the front hall.) Mysterious and tanned brother then arrives from Australia--or had he arrived weeks before?--to meet with the family lawyer to read the will, inherit the entire property, and to inform the neice that the dead uncle kept his word and gave her bumpkis. BUT--just when things couldn't look bleaker for Ruth and Ronald--it turns out that the uncle from down under hasn't been loafing around but working his ass off and accumulating a massive fortune. (How many fortunes does one family need?) He is so happy that his loathesome brother was murdered that he turns over the entire estate to Ruth because (a) he's  so rich, he doesn't need it and (b) giving her the property foils the dead uncle's dying wish to cut Ruth off! 

Right from the get go I was hoping that the vicar was going to be an unreliable-narrator-murderer but he really was just a know-it-all saintly do-gooder who at one point told the police that, if he discovered who the murderer was, he wasn't going to squeal because he was more concerned with "saving souls" than "serving man's justice." Fortunately the murderer got tricked into monologuing ("I'll tell you why I did it...!") and justice was served. (It's not clear if any souls were saved.) By the end of the novel I came to agree with the vicar: the events were just too fantastic to make a satisfying novel.

John Bude was the pseudonym for Ernest Elmore who wrote 30 mystery novels under that name and a few sci fi novels ("Steel Grubs" and "The Lumpton Gobbelings" to name two) under his own name.  Given how amazing many of the novels from this publisher are, I kept wondering why the authors used pseudonyms. But in this case, I think Ernest made a wise choice to publish this book under the name Bude. Martin Edwards, reviewing this book, wrote that the book "may not have been stunning enough to belong with the greats, but there is a smoothness and accomplishment about his first mystery, The Cornish Coast Murder, which you don't find in many debut mysteries." I agree: this isn't a great book.  But I don't agree that it is a good debut book. But all signs (sales and reviews) indicate that his other books really were much, much better. In those, he introduces character Inspector William Meredith to handle the murder mystery solving. I am guessing that that decision is likely why his other books end up better because the Vicar really is annoying. (His "shining fat cheeks" get mentioned far too often.)

Checkmate to Murder by E. C. R. Lorac

Lorac (a pseudonym for someone with the middle name "Carol", hence the fake last name, wrote a LOT of books, so I'll be featuring many of those.  Not all but many feature a Scotland Yard detective by the name Macdonald (yes, the D is small) and his trusty worker bee Reeves who is younger and therefore willing to throw himself into rivers, off roofs or through windows--whatever it takes to catch the bad guy.  Macdonald is Scottish and can affect a lilting Scottish burr on a dime and he uses that to his advantage as English people seem to assume that someone with a strong Scotland accent is a moron.

This story takes place in London during WWII and, yes, it's another story that very much relies on the Pea Soup Fog to ensure that streets are unnaturally empty at night and that no one can have a real good look at the bad guy sneaking around.  As with Brand's books, the murder victim is a much loathed individual.  He is an old, miserly codger who owns an old Victorian (does that mean large?) house that everyone who sees it says, "Wow, this was a beautiful house once...who's the asshole that refused to keep it up?" Well, our murder victim, that's who.  And like Ebeneezer Scrooge, the guy is LOADED (literally spends his evenings in bed because it's the only room with furniture in it, counting out his bills and coins while cackling) yet pretends to be poor so that a genuinely poor good natured char lady--after working a 12 hour shift to support herself--cleans his house and makes his meals for free.  She tells Macdonald that she would not THINK of charging that poor man for the little bit of her food that she shares with him!  (Sap.)  More saps: the young artists who rent a "loft" from him for an outrageous rent rate that they can't afford and the room has no heat, broken windows and rising damp on all the walls.  So, clearly he needs to go and he is finished off very early on--one clean bullet to the head.  It COULD be suicide but the gunshot is right through the front of his head and the gun was cleaned and placed far from his body.  So, murder it is.

The only suspects are the saintly (or is she?) char lady Mrs. Tubbs, the two renters (brother and sister artists--he's slovenly and she's constantly getting him out of scrapes both financial and personal), a model/actor who is posing for the brother while wearing a costume he "borrowed" from the theatre he somehow managed to get a play part with, and two guys who are "squares" (civil servants) who spend the whole evening playing an intense game of chess. (Ah!  Now the title of the book makes sense.)  The important events take place between 8:45 pm and 9:10 pm and all four men vouch that none could have left the room as each were in one another's sight; Mrs. Tubbs COULD have done it but why would she and if she was going to do it, why before going home would she stop by the loft to check up on the artists and chess players to tell them that she had just given the  "poor old dear" his dinner, locked his door as she left and then left his front door key on their table; the sister who was in the room with the four men the whole time except for the "brief " minute she went outside to verify that the blackout curtains were really working (she didn't want to get another 5 pound fine for light spilling out through the broken glass), and....the fly in the soup: a Canadian soldier who is one leave for two days so came to London to visit his uncle to make sure he was all right and instead found him stone cold dead with an empty cash box!

Again, we have a bunch of people lying for one another for all sorts of silly reasons and a (seemingly) impossible murder, yet clearly someone had to do it.  Reeves gets to crawl over walls, drain a giant dugout (an incomplete bomb shelter that allows rain water to pool), dart around on rooftops and charm crotchety nosy neighbor ladies who see more than they are willing to admit.

And two of the characters are heavy dope users and so particularly unreliable.

There are a lot of false clues, of course, and likely suspects who turn out to have rock solid alibis--one because he died in an air raid 12 months earlier. The main reason those locals are suspects is that they are petty criminals conning people out of their rations (working cons that really didn't make sense to me: apparently there were fabric coupons and truckloads of those coupons were being diverted to...I'm not sure but the main point is that a lot of hard work was being put into making a few bucks so that the con artists could avoid working hard).  The fact that these young men "weren't giving it to "ole 'itler" was another reason everyone hated them.

Macdonald seems to have a 6th sense for smelling out murderers as he is always right and is able to connect dots that no one else can see. (Including Reeves who really does try.)  One feature of all the Lorac books that I've read so far--and, as I said, there are LOADS of them--is that Macdonald expends a LOT of energy ensuring that there is plenty of evidence to prove who did NOT commit the murder, but not much to prove who DID commit the murder.  So Macdonald likes to contrive set ups that "encourage" the murderer(s) to take the honorable way out, thus saving their embarassed family and friends the distress of a murder trial--which, we are told, will just end with a hanging anyway, so isn't it better if the killer does one more killing for the right reasons?  I'm not sure I accept this line of thought since in this story the murderer is clearly unhinged and really shouldn't be found mentally capable of going to trial.  But it does allow for the story to wrap up neatly and quickly.  And it's interesting how quickly family members and friends resign themselves to the death of someone that not 10 minutes earlier they were certain was as innocent as a newborn babe.  But, once the facts are laid out for them, they shrug and say, "Well, what can you do?" and then go back to their business. 

Fixing the massive potholes next door

 Dollar General (which I still think of as Family Video, despite that closing in 2012 - the lettering on the sign has been there since those days - there used to be a FV at the mentioned intersection) has a parking lot that had potholes that entire families could vanish into.  Well, that ended today!  Nice of them to WARN us that we would have a day full of deafening noise and toxic fumes...

 

Scarweather by Anthony Rolls

This book is an extremely uncomfortable character study and all of the characters are hiding something to the point that no one really understands or is even certain they like one another at all. What's also unusual about the novel is that it does not feature any official police officer, not even an amateur sleuth like Sherlock Holmes. Instead, there are two pairs of characters whose interactions drive the story: one pair,  John and Frederick, are university friends who drift apart after they gets sucked into two very different directions while serving in different branches of the military during WWI (and both of whom show very obvious signs of PTSD). They keep in contact sporatically, but are both preoccupied with trying to assemble some sort of life post-war. Then there is another pair, John and his cousin Eric, who are not exactly friends since as adults they have nothing in common, but they did grow up together, share happy childhood memories, and are genuinely fond of one another.  Eric has become infatuated with a senior (in both senses of the word) world famous archeologist, Tolgen Reisby, who has invited him (Eric) to work with him (Reisby) on an important "dig" just near his (Reisby's) seaside property "Scarweather." Eric hears of John's release from a military hospital ("just a scratch") and to cheer him up invites him to go out with him to Scarweather.  John isn't remotely interested in archeology, but he's certainly happy to see the seaside and continue to recover from whatever mysterious ailments WWI inflicted on him while he tries to figure out what the hell to do with his life.

So off they go and during the whole train journey Eric goes on and on and ON about how AMAZING Reisby is, to the point that even obtuse John picks up that there is something more going on than simply a guy excited to be working with a famous archeologist. But what is it? 

They arrive and this is where the creepiness kicks in: Reisby is larger than life in all senses, a huge, booming person who has an explosive laugh for a nervous tic after he says something that is just not quite...socially acceptable. His wife, who is 1/3 his age (it is implied that she is a former student who got caught up in his whirlwind personality--she claims to adore him but she's hardly ever around unless he tells her to be), is young and beautiful...and CLEARLY has a thing for Eric. Has Reisby figured it out? Does Eric even know?  John isn't sure. Indeed, he isn't sure of much other than the fact that the place is damned weird and full of strange "artefacts" all over the place--more of a museum storage room than a home, with all the wrapped up packages laying about... And every once in a while Reisby disappears for an hour or two any time a large German boat can be seen just off the shore...Is that relevant?  And if so, to what?

Lovely warm sunshine plus amazing meals and freely flowing wine (no thanks to Reisby who insists that he be waited on hand and foot but also demands the VERY BEST of everything) and amusing (albeit occasionally strange) conversations make an awkward weekend tolerable. Yet, John is glad when he's finally free to leave and a train ride later, our cousins part ways.

Back in London John gets a decent (but inconsequential) job and occasionally runs into his friend Frederick (whom he calls by his last name, "Ellingham"--very English). [So when is the damned mystery going to begin?  You may well wonder....] A few weeks later John hears that Eric is heading back to Scarweather--more "digging"--and then he...completely disappears! The story, which he gets from Eric's mother who got it from Reisby's wife, is that Eric got up early one morning--something he NEVER does--and went for a swim along the shoreline in an area that is famous for dangerous riptides and a misleadingly swift tide change. There is absolutely no trace of his body and nothing is certain but that a towel was found along the shoreline where he is believed to have gotten into the water. John is crushed and immediately wonders if Reisby, in a jealous fit, killed Eric and then did away with the body.  He's mulling this over, paralyzed with indecision as to what he should do, when he happens to run into Ellingham. John tells Ellingham his story and Ellingham is sympathetic, even though he doesn't know Eric. Ellingham convinces John that they two of them should head out to Scarweather to collect Eric's piffling belongings to give to Eric's mother and also to give John a chance to see that his thoughts of murder are baseless fancies.

So they go. And if the first visit was awkward, well, this one is ten times worse. John's clumsy questioning clearly causes Reisby discomfort and he cycles through rage, defensiveness, tears and sullenness. Reisby has all the character traits of a narcissistic (yes, I know that word is overused but this guy really ticks all the boxes) on the verge of completely losing it.  Yet...there is absolutely no evidence of murder or anthing other than a terrible swimming accident.  After two days, John and Ellingham leave, with Ellingham urging John to forget all about it.

This ends part 1 of the book.  [When the hell is a murder mystery going to start?]  Next thing we know, 10 odd years go by! All this time John and Frederick have been doing their own thing, never hearing from each other outside of occasional holiday cards. Then, again, they run into each other.  And, of course, the issue of Eric comes up.  Does John still wonder if he was murdered? Yes, but...So Frederick suggests they go out to Scarweather again as a sort of an "exposure therapy" experience: if John can again see Scarweather and see that there really is nothing suspicious about the place or people, the sooner he can free himself from his preoccupation with Eric's death--and his guilt for not having intervened somehow. But how?  He doesn't know....But that isn't all that Ellingham is planning.  It turns out that he hasn't spent these past 10 odd years simply futzing with chemistry (his major at university), but boning up (so to speak) on archeology.  He's finally at the point in his studies that he can REALLY see what is behind Reisby's arrogant bluster and alarmingly explosive moods. And here, finally, the "who dunnit" really begins: Will Ellingham, who we now find out is the self appointed amateur sleuth of the novel, outwit Reisby and finally settle not "WAS Eric murdered?" but "HOW was he murdered?"  And more importantly, can Ellinham prove it so that justice can be done?

And, as a nice coda, we find out at the very end that the narrator is John who had urged Ellingham to write and publish the experience but Ellingham tells him, "If you want the world to know, you'll have to write it down"--which is exactly what Sherlock Holmes says to Watson after their first adventure together. Cute!

A very strange yet utterly gripping story. There really is no "mystery" since we all know--have good reason to suspect--exactly what happened and why.  The mystery is how to get through the layers and layers and LAYERS of lies and weirdness of Scarweather. I'm kind of surprised that Alfred Hitchcock didn't turn this into a movie--it has exactly the sort of sinster, sexual, and nasty mood that he seemed to be drawn to.

Also, an aside: I have so far read 15 of these British Classic Murder Mysteries, and about 2/3 of them feature dope fiends/dope dealing. This is one of them. Those evening conversations at Scarweather were weird for a reason. If these books have taught me anything, England was awash with heroin and cocaine between the Great Wars. 

Anthony Rolls is the pseudonym of Colwyn Edward Vulliamy (1886-1971) who wrote many academic books under his own name (translations of Voltaire, archeology books on Middlesex, books on Rousseau, Boswell, William Penn and George III to name just a few).  He also wrote murder mysteries or, more properly, psychological thrillers under the name Anthony Rolls. 

Film review: Companion (2025)

 This film is essentially an elongated Black Mirror episode - not that there's anything wrong with that - except a bit perkier than the usual, which tend (at least the ones I've seen) to want to be a bit gloomy and portentous, whereas this is, despite a fairly high body count, mostly fun, even if it does have some pointed things to say about technology revealing the worst in humans.  It's also probably got a lower budget than some Black Mirror episodes, which is not to say that it looks cheap, more that it's a clever conceit that needs minimal SFX to convey.  If you haven't seen it, I suggest you stop reading and see it now.  If you've seen the trailer - or even the poster above - a fairly early twist has been spoilt (incidentally, that's a key difference between English English and American English - no American would write "whilst" or "learnt" or "spoilt" - only -e or -ed endings for them, and consequently my American spell-checker has that underlined in red).  But, unless you were completely unaware that there were any sci-fi elements to the film (a state of ignorance that would be undermined by the early minutes of the film, where the main couple are in a self-driving car), you would probably guess that the title "companion" means that the main female character is a robot (or sexbot, or fuckbot, as the hateable male characters tend to refer to them - although, in the interests of balance, there is also [another spoiler] a male sexbot in the film as well).

Anyway, the early parts of the film certainly tease the fact that she's a robot, even as we see her (Iris) and him (Josh (of course - "Josh" is the perfect dickweed name)) meet cute in a grocery store 

and then drive out deep into the country to stay for a weekend with a female friend of Josh's (Kat, whom Iris knows hates her), her rich Russian boyfriend who owns the place, and a gay couple who are also friends of Josh and Kat's) - Josh calls Iris "Beep-boop", Iris appears to know the temperature and humidity without looking it up, and a few others.  We also see something significant without realizing it - after Josh and Iris have sex that night (let's just say Josh finishes fast), Iris wants to stay awake talking, whereas Josh rolls over and says "Go to sleep Iris".  The scene cuts to black before we see what is later the reveal that Iris is a robot: when he says that key phrase, she goes into standby and her eyes do the thing they're doing in the poster.  This happens after the first fatality of the film.  In the morning Iris wants to go down to the lakeside that the palatial "cabin" abuts to catch some rays, while Josh says he wants to get over his hangover first.  As she leaves the house we see him pick up what looks like a thumbdrive/USB stick (that we saw came packed in the luggage) and insert it into his phone, and then tap away on the phone.  Meanwhile, by the lake, Iris discovers a nasty-looking switchblade in her pocket, and she is joined at the lake by Sergey, who gets progressively pervy towards her.  

(He knows she's a sexbot even if she doesn't.)  Cut to the rest up at the house and they see Iris come in drenched in blood.  

She's freaking out so much that Josh has to do the "Go to sleep, Iris" thing.  They tie her up and plan to call the cops, but Josh screws up because he wants to say goodbye, 

and at the same time reveals to her that she's a robot.  Naturally he leaves her tied to the chair to go argue with Kat and she gets loose.  It's then that we (and the gay couple - the chubby, older Eli (What We Do In The Shadows' Harvey Guillen) 

and the younger, much better-looking, but apparently besotted Patrick) learn that this has all been planned by Kat and Josh because Sergey has a safe full of money (with a combination of Stalin's birthday) and besides, he's a bad dude.  (Later we learn that Josh thinks he's Russian mob, but he's just a businessman (albeit with a wife and kid) and Kat let Josh think that so he'd plan the murder.  But don't worry, Kat gets hers.) So the four of them (one of whom is also a robot) set out into the woods to track Iris down.  But there's a catch: she's also taken Josh's phone (otherwise he could remotely shut her down) and has bumped up her intelligence setting from 40% (when she sees that it's set that low she sighs and says  "Oh Josh" - as in, "you would want your girlfriend dumb, you loser") up to 100%.  And thus the plan begins to unravel disastrously.

Without wanting to give too much away, I do have some notes.  Good first: in general the dialog is really good.  Eli especially has some funny lines (one in particular, where he calls himself an "ally" to the robot community had me snorting). The actress who plays Iris (Sophie Thatcher) does a wonderful job anchoring the film.  She doesn't get to be funny or snarky, which is why you probably remember the other actors more, but she is eminently believable in an unbelievable role, which is no mean feat.  Also I commend her for not having her snaggle teeth fixed (despite playing a robot!) and she's not even British!  Jack Quaid, who first came to notice in The Boys but nowadays seems to be in everything, is certainly willing to be an unlikeable git in this, and get humiliated in various ways.  That's in part why his sudden turn to being sinister, brave and competent at the very end of the movie is an unbelievable twist, although it does set up a nice reversal of a key phrase already mentioned.  This also happens after Iris has been completely rebooted and made autonomous, so the idea that he should still have some grip on her (all sexbots imprint on the first person to appear to them when they initially boot up 

[they can be rebooted if you hold a spot behind their ear for a count of five] so that they are nauseatingly infatuated with said person) seems implausible, especially after all she knows about him.

There are also some odd inconsistencies: at one point Iris is made to shoot herself in the head in an attempt to dispose of a problem before the cops come, but then the bot-owners who come to pick up this supposed rogue bot (one of whom immediately clocks that she's been "modded") reveal that (a) she's full of complete recordings of everything that's happened, and (b) that's not where her brains are, so she's just essentially in shock, but later we see her with no evidence of a large hole in each temple.  Furthermore, the other sexbot commits the equivalent of hara-kiri, they do so by shoving a cattle prod in their mouth, when presumably they should shove it in their chest, where all the central processing goes on.  But once you think about the sexbots not knowing (well, I should qualify that, but watch the film) that they're robots despite never having bodily functions...  Or, given that we see them "eating" do they also shit?  Is the shit just chewed up food or do their innards convert it into convincing turds?  How much does the company care about not letting them know they're not human?

The ending is also very reminiscent of (the superior but not as funny) Ex Machina.  But all those quibbles aside, it is definitely a fun ride with some laugh out loud moments as well as some Terminator-esque moments of dread.  You can definitely see the same DNA as Barbarian, which shared some people behind the scenes.  Joe Bob says check it out!

 

London Particular by Christianna Brand

Here is another "locked room" murder mystery by Brand. This one, as can be gathered from the title, is set in London in 1952.  WWII is over and London is a bit of a shambles and, worst of all, is almost constantly coated with thick, choking "fog" that makes it impossible to see anything when one is sneaking about after dark. This is a nice way to create mood and terror without having to introduce menacing people as simply being alone outside and blind in a massive city, where one can hear that there are people walking (their shoes "click click" on the damp "greasy" sidewalks) but you cannot see who they are--friend or foe?  There's no way to know.  So, effectively, The Fog becomes the most important character in this book and it is the device that locks the room, as it ensures that only a tiny number of people are possible suspects for the murder that starts it all.

The murder happens early on and, as I mentioned in my previous post, Brand's victims are usually very unlikable and so no one misses them or is even remotely saddened when looking at their noggins cracked open like a smashed boiled egg. (There is one exception but this isn't it.) In this case, the victim is a French acquaintance, Raoul, who is notoriously lecherous which means all the women have a motive because each, it turns out, has been the victim of his wandering hands and genitals.  What's extra satisfying about the book is that the women--there are three of them--have no idea that the others had been similarly victimized and each lived alone with their grief and shame. Once the facts came out--because Inspector Cockrill discovers all--they suddenly feel a kinship with one another, become allies (needlessly lying for each other because each thinks one of the other killed him and so they are covering for her), and each envies the murderer, wishing THEY had been the one to kill the guy. Again we benefit from Brand's hospital experience in her younger days as the murder weapon is a nasty bit of medical equipment, a mastoid mallet, which just happened to be lying about near the door where the body was found...Or was it?  

At the center of the story is Rose, a "sweet young thing" who is perceived as ditsy by the men (but not the women), who is pregnant and desperately wants to find a doctor who will "give her something to take care of it." This matters not only because several men have VERY strong, disapproving views about women having sex before marriage (none of the women share those views) but all disapprove of women having an abortion--yes, to the point of ensuring that Rose is stopped at ALL COSTS. (No, the irony is a man scheming to kill a pregnant woman to stop her from having an abortion because he thinks abortions are immoral is NOT lost on Brand and is precisly the point.) One of the male characters is deeply disappointed in her and furious with  whomever he suspects is the "father" (and his suspicions rotate through suspects as he learns more and more about Rose's recent "holiday" in France...) and another is dangerously jealous of the "father" and angry with her as he wanted her "pure" for himself.  If only he wasn't "so old and ugly" and if only Rose hadn't laughingly told him so when he asked her to marry him...

Then the bodies really start piling up which shortens the suspect list but also makes it more inexplicable, since whatever motivated the murder of Raoul can't possibly create a motive for the other murders...Or can it? Eventually Cockrill (nicknamed "Cockie" by one of the characters who knew him from when he lived in Kent) starts working with rather than against Charlesworth (his Big Black Smoke counterpart) and the pieces fall into place. 

Why was Cockie in London?  No particular reason. And why does a Kent police inspector have authority to investigate a murder in London?  He doesn't, which is why his clomping around really ticks off the London officers.

British Library Crime Classics: Green For Danger, Christianna Brand

Some months ago, I was complaining about being tired and depressed, and Simon suggested that I stop "doom scrolling" in bed, and read a "real book" for a change.  While I had binged on many John le Carré George Smiley books and found them all very satisfying, I was moving through the le Carrés in chronological order and was getting to the point where the political events concerned became too relevant to current events.  As a result, the books became less "distractions" and instead "long immersions" into really depressing subjects.  So, I gave up reading books and went back to my doom scrolling on my phone until the wee hours. Then two things happened almost simultaneously: we watched Green for Danger, the movie, and an Instagram popped up in my "feed" that celebrated the arrival of a new British Library Crime Classic in the poster's (snail) mailbox. The post included an image of the book and I was entranced:  Who got books with such great covers popping into their mailboxes without having to order them?  People who subscribed to the British Libary Crime Classics book club and so were sent a newly minted book every month, that's who.  (There is an equivalent British Libray Class Sci Fi club.)

ANYWAY: I purchased a copy of Resorting to Danger (which I'll review in the future) and Simon bought me Green for Danger to add to my rapidly growing collection of books from this publisher. I was particular excited to read Green for Danger as I liked the story and I wanted to see if the movie was making a bad book good or if the book could stand on its own.  And my conclusion is that, yes, very much so, the book is a wonder.  In her day, Christianna Brand was just as famous as Agatha Christie, though I had never heard of her.  Her books sold by the millions and she her name was on everyone's lips--every English person's lips, that is.  She was writing at the height of the "English Cozy Detective Murder Mystery" craze that gripped England from just after WWI until the late 1950s.  WHY people in England wanted to read tens of millions of relatively bloodless murder mysteries, I have no idea. But they did and there are absolutely treasure troves of the things, kicking around, out of print, that this publishing company is slowly bringing back into print with fantastic covers.

As to Green for Danger: I won't summarize the plot as Simon did so in the movie review and the movie sticks very closely tho the book (insofar as a novel can be turned into a 90-odd minute movie.) But there are three things about Brand's writing that really stand out, and make her novels very worth the time it takes to read them: 

(1) The book was written in 1944 and provides a very vivid feel for a moment in time that is long gone.  Not only does she take the time to describe the way people live (how they make tea, what sorts of clothes they wear, what foods are available during wartime, and how hospitals are run--including very specific descriptions of nursing schedules and surgery procedures).

(2) The women out number the men and are way more interesting than the men.  There are only three men: the detective and two doctors. (There are other men--patients, and a mailman--but they are extremely peripheral.) The women are in no way interchangeable and each very much has their own voice.  Also, two obviously have sexual desires, have sex and are unashamed of having--and liking--sex.  (Neither are married.)  One doctor is constantly pestering one nurse to marry him and she allows him to paw her because she doesn't mind the sex it sometimes leads to, but she has NO interest in marrying him.  She has agreed to be engaged to him,and even wears an engagement ring that he gave her, but she has no intention of actually going through with marriage.  At one point, he asks (petulantly), "Does my ring mean nothing to you?" (This was after he caught her making out with another, much older and more financially and emotionally secure, doctor.) "Not really," she says, and she takes it off and gives it back to him--NOT the response he was hoping for.  And she isn't a bitch or a vixon but the protagonist who really is better off without the guy!  The conversations between the women when there are no men around--which are plentiful-- are also frank and wholly plausible. 

(3) The women's bodies are described the way WOMEN think about women's bodies: one woman laments her leg hair needing constant attention that she hadn't time for (she decides to give up shaving rather than waste time shaving that she could spend sleeping); another has a bra strap popping loose all the time because wartime underwear elastic is crap--she, too, finds attending to these small annoyances  tedious and eventually decides it isn't worth caring about. The internal dialogs of the women are also amazingly modern--no, better than modern because it is STILL the case that female character inner dialog never sound genuine or "real" but instead read as if authors--male and female--have never bothered to wonder or find out how women think to themselves about themselves.

Finally, as to the "mystery" part of the murder mystery: Brand is masterful at creating so-called 
"locked room" murder mysteries. They aren't literally in a room but she sets them up so there is a very small number of people who could have "done it" (so far, of her books that I have read, it's been 5-7 people--this one has 5) and yet (a) none of them seem to possibly have been able to have "done it" though (b) all of them really, really wanted the murdered person dead. That, too, is a nice feature of her books: the world is better off without the dead people and no one pretends to be cut up about their loss. And, blessedly, none of the murders are "sex crimes" so I don't have to suffer an endless pile of young girls being found naked in dumpsters with bits cut off as trophies. (Yeesh, when did that trend start and, more importantly, when will it STOP???)

As Simon mentioned in his review of the movie, Alistair Sim is a perfect person to play Inspector Cockrill, a rural police inspector who is shlubby, clumsy, clever, sardonic and cynical--so, obviously, he rubs everyone wrong and because they desperately want to get away from him they blurt out things that they shouldn't. (He also sneaks around and pops up in places no one expects--another tedious feature that flusters his suspects.) He's a regular in Brand's books and, very cleverly, she paired him up with his polar opposite, a London CID Detective named Charlesworth in a few of her novels, so we get the yin/yang effect. THEN, even more cleverly, she had Charlesworth feature in his own stories. Brand obviously knew how to appeal to all stripes of readers.

June gloom came early

As usual, we haven't had a Spring, just alternating between Summer and Winter.  We had some hot weather for a while so I made arrangements to play Pickleball (proof that I am transitioning into my dotage) and then suddenly it's dropped to the 50s in the day, and it will be that until June.  We've had the gas fire on in the sitting room the past couple of days.  Unusual even for Michigan.  Frederick and I ventured out to Stepping Stones Fall in a light drizzle.

 

Film review: Children of Paradise (1945)

This film has been voted the best film of all time by critics (and, apparently, Marlon Brando), and is regularly voted top ten, especially in France.  While I suspect I'm more of a fan of it than Jami, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't put it up there just yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those films that rewards repeat viewings.  It's another whopper, over three hours like Andrei Rublev, but unlike that one we managed it in just two mouthfuls (and indeed it is divided into two parts, and has been occasionally released as two distinct films), because it tells a proper story that sucks you in.  Apparently it was billed as France's answer to Gone With the Wind, and was at the time the most expensive French film of all time, and you can see the money up there on the screen in the amazing sets and the massive crowd 

and theater scenes, 

but at the same time, while epic in ambition it seems remarkably intimate in scope, and tells a story that, in retrospect seems too simple for the three hours it took to tell it.  It's set in the theater district of Paris, in the 1830s (ish) and the four main characters - one woman and the four men who desire her - are loosely based on actual historical characters.  The woman 

is known by the single name Garance (she reveals her real name under police questioning towards the end of part I) and, appropriately, is played by a French star of the stage who went by the mononym Arletty (as you might gather by the release date, this film was shot in occupied France, which makes its scope and ambition all the more remarkable, and in the same year the film was released, Arletty was prosecuted for having an affair with a Nazi officer (she is reputed to have said that "my heart is French but my ass is international")).  Her suitors are the mime Baptiste (based on the real mime Deburau - the whole film came about because the actor who plays Baptiste (who is not a good-looking fellow - 

you can tell he was cast because of his actual talent at mimery) 

bumped into the director, Marcel Carné, and his writing partner when they were taking a stroll in Nice and pitched them a story about this mime (who accidentally killed somebody who was pestering him by hitting him too hard with his cane, and had to talk in public in the subsequent trial, which naturally attracted vast crowds) - the writing partner hated mimes but thought that he could work something out that would involve his favorite topic, the criminal whom we will get to soon), the actor (who is just a ne'er-do-well at the beginning of the film) Frédérick Lemaitre, the foppish existentialist master criminal Lacenaire 

and, arriving late in part I, the aristocrat Count de Montray.  Adding to the confusion, Baptiste is adored by the daughter of his boss, Nathalie (who kept reminding me of Chloë Sevigny)

(who, for my money, is far prettier than the supposed drop-dead gorgeous Arletty (who was well into her 40s at the time of this movie, but had undeniable magnetism, and was constantly lit with a little puddle of light in her face), 

for whom he only feels mild friendly affection.  The story is very ably summarized by the Wikipedia entry, so I'm not going to do my usual plot summary but rather skip straight to observations that go beyond the series of events listed there.

Baptiste introduces Frédérick to his landlady (whom Frédérick immediately sets about successfully seducing) 

when he finds Frédérick has nowhere to stay, but then goes out for a walk.  He is accosted by a "blind" beggar who it is that invites him to the Red Breast restaurant 

and who points out the table with Garance and Lacenaire at it and says it's them who are responsible for the garrotting of the previous owner.  Nonetheless the smitten Baptiste invites Garance for a dance, which annoys Lacenaire (who honestly doesn't seem to lust after Garance as much as desire her for an audience for his simultaneously world-weary and self-congratulatory bon mots - he definitely has literary pretensions, and the actor is pretty magnetic, and manages to be effectively menacing when called to be, which is no mean feat given his ridiculous hairdo), who sets his large, but rather cowardly and ineffective henchman on him.  He throws Baptiste out through a window (and when the owner protests, he is reminded what happened to the last owner) - only to see Baptiste stroll back in through the door dusting himself off nonchalantly, kick the henchman down and walk out with Garance.  (Baptiste explains that he was bullied a lot and had to learn to fend for himself, and no doubt his tumbling experience helped.)  Garance also has nowhere to go, and Baptiste takes her back to his lodgings, where he is surprised to find his landlady upstairs (we know why) needing to be called down.  This landlady surely is the nicest in Paris, and her rooms are enviably large and available.  As Wikipedia explains, Garance refuses to say that she loves Baptiste, but makes it perfectly clear that she's DTF, 

but he leaves in some kind of nervous paroxysm, leaving the clearly inexhaustible Frédérick to move in when he hears her singing from the room next door.

Lacenaire's henchman's ineffectiveness is revealed later when he fails to knock off an elderly man who is holding something valuable and who happens to live in Garance's building.  When she returns (passing through a crowd around the building who have humorously exaggerated stories about what has occurred, mostly concerning a murder that hasn't happened), the policeman who detained her for the theft of the watch sees her and connects her with Lacenaire, who is suspected of both crimes.  It is then that we find out her real name under questioning.  The police officer is about to drag her away for complicity (despite the old man's pointing out that he's not really that badly off and nothing was stolen) when she remembers the card the Count gave her earlier after she turned him down, and thus she is drawn into his orbit by owning him a favor - end of part I.

Our view of Frédérick is much improved in part II.  Not only has he been revealed to have real talent, he is no longer exploiting people left and right, and indeed is generous with his money (despite having such debts that he is set upon by a crowd of his creditors and has to wear an eyepatch 

in his play to hide a black eye), as well as fearless - showing up blind drunk to a duel and shrugging off a bullet wound.  Furthermore he can recognize that Baptiste has become, if anything, more of a talent than himself, and that Garance loves Baptiste more than himself.  It is a complete turnaround from the rather despicable figure of the first part.  Lacenaire, too, gains in stature.  Where in part I we saw him fencing spoons and other trifles, and failing to rob an old man, we see him magically entering Garance's room in the Count's swank mansion, and coolly face down the Count's snobbery 

and, eventually, fatally stab him in some kind of prideful act of vengeance and sacrifice.  (But the Count certainly had it coming - we find out that he has killed several people in duels merely because they looked at Garance.)  And then we have the final scene where Nathalie is left in the room Baptiste has been hiding out in since Garance came back (the same room in his old lodgings that he gave Garance when he first brought her back from the Red Breast) howling "what about me?" and (heartbreakingly) Nathalie and Baptiste's son (for whom Garance seems to have greater feeling than Baptiste) standing outside waiting for her,

not noticing as his father races out to try to catch the woman he loves more than his own family, who has just (unbeknownst to her) lost her sugar daddy.  It is a shockingly abrupt moment when the "curtains" that opened at the beginning of the film close on a scene of Baptiste swept away in a sea of white-clad clones of his own mime character, and we are left to guess at the fates of all our main characters.  Is this how people felt about the "fade-to-black" ending of the Sopranos?

Now, I have focused on just the main four (plus Nathalie), but there are several entertaining side-characters, including the rag-and-bone man who trades spoons to Lacenaire and gossip to everyone else, 

Baptiste's "father" (I'm not sure if it's his real one, or just the actor whom he was apprenticing with) who first berates him but then praises him when his true mime talent emerges; Nathalie's father and the boss of the Funambules, who is a real character out of Dickens, who fines everybody in his company for various infractions and is constantly fretting and catastrophising. Even such incidental characters as the three-headed playwriting team that grow incensed with Frédérick's (gallingly popular) mockery of their play are hilarious creations.  And I have to say that the plays 

and even (especially) the mime-shows 

are beautifully recreated.  A surprising (because it really doesn't drag as one might have feared that it would) chunk of the running time of the film is spent watching these shows, which is appropriate, given that the title is a punning reference to show-people.

Actually, the more I write about it, the more I see the scope of the film and the craft that went into it.  Definitely worth a re-visit, and not out of a sense of duty, either.

Film review: Andrei Rublev (1966)

Our second art-house classic from 1966 in a row.  This one was, I confess, more of a struggle to get through than Algiers.  We're familiar with Tarkovsky (we've seen Stalker, Solaris, Ivan's Childhood and Mirror) so we knew what to expect, but this one was, if anything, harder to follow than Mirror. Ostensibly a biography of the early 15th century painter-of-religious-frescoes, it is instead a series of chapters, very loosely linked by the titular Rublev being involved, sometimes very tangentially.  One gets the impression that there is deeply felt religious conviction bubbling somewhere under the surface, but lacking even one tiny religious bone, it was all surface to me.  Of course, because it's Tarkovsky, that surface is exquisite, and, like his only previous movie Ivan's Childhood, in gorgeous black and white (apart from the epilogue, where the real Rublev's actual art is shown in color).  My Tarkovsky-viewing philosophy is to treat it like a visit to an art museum and as much as possible just try to get lost in the imagery.  This is hampered somewhat by the need to read the subtitles, but I've never found Tarkovsky's dialogue to be particularly striking (maybe it loses something in the translation) so probably the best thing to do would be to watch it a second time without subtitles.  I think it'll be a while with Andrei Rublev, though, although in saying that I know I'm committing blasphemy (perhaps almost literally, given the overt religiosity of the film), as this is one of the most highly-praised of his, but it is over three hours long.  Fortunately, it is broken into digestible chapters, and I'll summarize them now.

 1. The Jester (Summer 1400)
The film opens on three young monks walking through the countryside.  They are our hero, Andrei, and Daniil and Kiril. It begins to rain, so they take shelter in what looks like a barn, although it might as well be a pub, as it is packed with people drinking and celebrating, most notably a jester, who sings a song, bangs a drum and does flips.  

Kiril steps out, soldiers arrive, arrest the jester and knock him out and take him off on a horse.  They come back for his musical instrument and break it.  Everyone is a little shellshocked and then Kiril comes back and the three monks leave.

2. Theophanes the Greek (1405-6)
This is broken into two parts.  In the first, Kiril has found the eponymous famous fresco-painter and talks to him in his workshop, eventually persuading him to hire him (Kiril) as his assistant for the job of painting the Cathedral of the Annunciation (in Moscow).  

Kiril mentions Andrei rather disparagingly and you get the impression that he knows Andrei is better than him which is why he's come to see Theophanes to pip Andrei to the post.  The second part is at the monastery, or at least, outside in the yard in the dead of winter, where a man comes from Theophanes, and instead of offering the job to Kiril as planned (Kiril clearly wanted this to happen in front of his fellow monks), he hires Andrei.  Andrei accepts (without much fanfare) which briefly annoys Danil, who refuses to come with him when asked (but says goodbye later), and enrages Kiril to the extent that he quits the monastery and storms off and (in one of several very upsetting scenes of animal cruelty in the film) beats his dog savagely when it tries to follow him.

3. The Passion (1406)
Andrei is on the way to Moscow with a new character, apparently an apprentice, Foma, whom he chides for being a liar. They encounter Theophanes in the woods and the old man bad temperedly sends Foma away.  A dead swan features, for some reason.  Andrei and Theophanes argue about religion (the latter seems far less filled with reverence than the former) and we see a mock crucifixion being performed on a snowy hill (the passion of the title).  

Foma clearly hasn't gone far, because he's washing brushes in the stream, leading to an indelible image of white paint in the flowing water.

4. The Holiday (1408)
Now it's Summer, and Andrei and Foma are walking in the woods by a river behind some others when Andrei hears something and looks back to see lights.  On investigating (he has to struggle through thick undergrowth) he stumbles on a pagan festival, involving much nudity and cavorting, and enacting what appears to be a mock mini Viking funeral in the river.  

Andrei is caught spying and tied to a cross inside a hut.  A pagan woman is intrigued by him and sets him free.  He runs off and gets caught up in the undergrowth again, only finding his party (not just Foma but another apprentice who is a recurring figure, as well as another man) in the morning.  They get into a boat and are floating off 

when they see soldiers chasing a pagan couple (one of whom is the woman who freed Andrei).  They catch both but the woman breaks free and dropping her clothes, jumps into the river and swims away, passing Andrei's boat without a look.

5. The Last Judgment (1408)
Andrei and Danil are in a town called Vladimir, supposedly painting a picture of the last judgment, but Andrei has painter's block.  As his assistants potter about in the church, which is all white, Andrei goes for a walk along a road with Danil and confesses that he doesn't want to paint images to scare the masses.  A messenger rides by them, and brings the news that the Bishop insists they must be finished by Autumn.  Foma is fed up and packs up and leaves for a job at a less prestigious church.
Elsewhere, stone carvers (presumably associated with Andrei) have finished working in the mansion of the Grand Duke.  Children run around, one of them is picked up by a burly man and slaps him repeatedly, to no noticeable effect.  However, the Grand Duke doesn't like the work and wants them to re-do it.  They refuse and leave intending to go work for the Grand Duke's brother.  However, they are waylaid in the forest and, in a scene of sudden savagery (because they don't seem to be expecting anything bad from the people who waylay them, they have their eyes cut out! 

We return to Andrei's church to find him throwing dark mud-like paint on the white walls.  (According to Wikipedia, this is in protest because he has heard of the blinding, but I didn't pick that up.)  A young boy who escaped the blinding comes in and is instructed to read from the bible.  A seemingly simple woman comes in from a rainstorm 

and seems upset by the paint and smears it obsessively, wailing.

6. The Raid (Autumn 1408)
We meet the aforementioned brother of the Grand Duke, who has allied with a band of Tatars who invade Vladimir.  They burn and loot but find few people until they realize they're all barricaded in the church.  They set up one of those swinging log things and break down the door and come in and kill just about everybody except Andrei and the mute simple girl (Durochka) who only escapes being raped because Andrei kills the soldier who is carrying her upstairs.  We see a man being tortured (Wikipedia says he is the king's messenger) but he refuses to reveal what they want to hear so they poor molten metal in his mouth and drag him off behind a horse.  In the aftermath, among the corpses, 

Durochka plaits a dead woman's hair while Andrei has a conversation with an apparently-living but known-to-be dead Theophanes.  This section also includes a rather horrific scene of a horse falling off a platform and I read that it died - adding to the theme of animal cruelty.

7. Silence (1412)
Andrei has brought Durochka back to the monastery, but he has also taken on a vow of silence because he killed a man.  Times are hard - crops have failed and all there are to eat are sour apples.  Among some refugees, a much-changed Kiril is recognized, who begs the father superior to be allowed to stay.  

Only if you write out the scriptures 15 times, he is told.  A dwarf, who perhaps had the job before, delighted runs after the father superior after hearing this.
Tatars show up at the monastery, but Andrei practically ignores them. One of them takes a fancy to Durochka, offering her the chance to be his umpteenth wife (but first Russian).  Showing how simple she is, she is delighted (particularly by his pointy hat) and snatches her arm away when Andrei tries to drag her off and rides off with them.  Kiril re-introduces himself to Andrei and reassures him that the Tatars will be scared to harm a "holy fool," but he cannot get Andrei to break his silence, and Andrei just goes back to his task of taking hot stones from a fire to drop into a caldron, although he fumbles one into the snow.

8. The Bell (1423-24)
As you can tell, significant time has passed, and Andrei has aged noticeably.  His hair has fallen out and he looks haggard.  But he's only an incidental figure in this final section, which is about the forging of a bell for a church.  This is masterminded by the teenaged son (Boriska) of a famous bell-maker, whom soldiers come looking for to be told he's died of the plague.  Boriska persuades them to take him instead, insisting that his father passed on his secrets before he died (of course he didn't).  You can view this as a sort of separate mini-movie, as we watch Boriska becoming tyrannical as he bosses his underlings, 

many of them far older than him, and has a young assistant beaten for refusing (on good grounds) to do what he tell him to do.  However, he succeeds!  The bell is cast and it rings, which is a good thing because the Grand Duke is watching, ready to decapitate everyone involved if the bell does not ring.  When it does, everyone but Boriska celebrates.  He collapses, wracking with sobs, as Andrei cradles him and breaks his silence.  Boriska confides that he was winging it the whole time, but Andrei comforts him and proposes that they work together - "You'll cast bells, I'll paint icons"

Somewhere in the middle of all this, the jester from the first chapter accosts Andrei and blames him for denouncing him, resulting in ten years in prison.  He is about to hit Andrei with an axe when Kiril intercedes.  The jester is mollified and goes back to drinking and dropping trou.  Kiril reveals to Andrei that it was he who denounced the jester.  

Then we get the Epilogue.  And honestly, the real Rublev's art might be a work of genius for the time, but it's not my thing.

Overall, as usual with Tarkovsky, the images stay with you.  And the actor who plays Andrei, Anatoly Solonitsyn, for whom this was his first role (he read the screenplay and traveled to Moscow on his own dime to insist to Tarkovsky that he was Andrei) is a marvel (you'll recognize him if you've seen any of Tarkovsky's later films, because he's in them up to Stalker, after which he dies of the same cancer that would later claim Tarkovsky and his wife) - incredibly soulful and expressive face.  If it's ever showing on a big screen, that's definitely the way to see it.