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alltheworldsinmyhead · 4 years

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HEART DON’T FAIL ME NOW

gendry + arya + anastasia au // ao3

Gendrya Appreciation Week, Day 2: AU

Girl gets a family.

Boy gets rich

And fairytale gets a spin

How can we fail with everything to win?

Conman and princess get their wish

Fairytale comes true

Funny, one small part I never knew

With everything to win

The only thing I lose is

You.

- Everything to Win, Anastasia The Musical

*****

Never, in his twenty-seven years of life and twenty-one of making a living as a thief, a swindler and a trickster on the streets of Leningrad, Gendry Waters had a worse job than teaching one infuriatingly stubborn orphan girl how to be a princess.

If only Arry did not look like the absolute older mirror copy of Princess Arya Stark, he would’ve long ago vetoed the whole idea and, with or without Davos approval, left the girl somewhere near the closest bar so she could find a job better suited for her fiery temper and foul mouth. But, to his eternal despair, she is every bit as pale-skinned, grey-eyed and dark-haired like The Lost Princess and the fact that she doesn’t seem to remember a single thing from childhood only makes the whole con easier.

She is also desperate to find out anything about her past and willing to believe in the story they made up about her with a heart-wrenching determination.

Truth to be told, Gendry can understand that. He too, comes from nothing. Maybe if he was not sure of that, if he didn’t remember his mother’s clients kicking him for laughs as if he was a street rat, he would also entertain the thought of having a loving family once. But he does remember and he has no doubt at all that he is a rat indeed. A clever, Russian rat, but a rat still.

See, that is the whole problem about Arry – it is all about this idea of a loving family for her. She doesn’t care if they were Starks or simple factory workers. She just needs to belong somewhere, it is clear as a day.

And that makes it impossible for Gendry to hate her, even when she is bickering with him all days long and getting on his last nerve every time she opens her mouth.

Which means all the damn time.

***

He found her in Winter Palace; a small figure curled on the damaged wood of the ballroom’s floor, tracing the ruined tapestry depicting the former royal family with her fingertips.

In the cold winter light getting through the shattered windows, she looked like something straight out of a dream. Dressed in mismatched, baggy clothes to keep warm and with an uneven cut hair underneath man’s hat, she might have been just another poor girl, whoring herself to keep starvation at bay. She was probably just looking for shelter from the cold.

No need to pay attention to her at all, I should just leave her be and look through the second floor like I planned to –

Her gasp could be heard even across the room when Gendry stepped on the particularly squeaky floorboard.

She jumped to her feet immediately, quick as a flash.

‘’Don’t be afraid.’’ He said, but the cold shock spread through his body, making him freeze in place.

Because the girl was standing tall in front of the tapestry and the stray sunlight framed her, caressed her features so lovingly – her cheekbones and her chin, her eyes, and her brow – that something sweet and long gone resurfaced suddenly in his memory. Buried underneath the years-long past like a smell of his mother’s hair and the screams of people butchered on the streets.

On the wall behind her, there was a damaged depiction of a small girl in silver furs, Dark-haired, long-faced, gray-eyed.

And she was staring at him silently. Dark-haired, long-faced.

Fire burning in her grey eyes.

***

‘’ One more time. You learned how to ride horses at three.’’

‘’And my father got me my own when I was six.’’

‘’Correct. The horse’s name was –‘’

‘’Nymeria.’’

‘’I don’t believe we told her that, did we?’’

***

‘’Robb. Sansa. Bran. Rickon. Robb. Sansa. Bran. Rickon. It doesn’t seem right.’’ She whines, wriggling in her seat.

The train slowly rolls through snowy hills of Poland towards France and Gendry wants to do nothing else but savor the triumph of getting out of godforsaken Russia – oh, excuse him, Soviet Union – but he could not do that with Arry’s constant chirping. Sometimes, he wonders if the perspective of Princess Sansa offering him the girl’s weight in gold is a worthy reward for all his trouble. She’s a small thing, after all.

With a pained groan, he covers his eyes with his arm.

‘’Would you shut up for a second?’’

He can hear Davos’ warning huff and then Arry’s voice, dripping with honey.

‘’Gendry, can I ask you something?’’

He wants to say no, but he has pushed his luck enough already. You need to control your temper, my boy, Davos said. We need to keep her happy.

‘’Yes?’’

‘’Do you truly believe I’m a princess?’’

No.

He drops his arm and nods his head slowly. Arry sits with her back straight as a rod and her chin up, the way they taught her. Gendry cannot help but think that this posture suits her.

‘’Yes, I do.’’

She bites on her lip slightly and then one of her eyebrows slowly raises up in a perfect arch.

‘’Well, is it a way to speak to a princess then?’’ she says coolly, dignified, and Davos doesn’t manage to reach for his tissue fast enough to mask his laughter under fake coughing.

Somehow, it’s hard to scowl at her after that.

***

‘’What’s so incorrect about that?’’ he asks her later, in the dead of the night, when only Davos’ snoring interrupts the silence in their car.

‘’Huh?’’

‘’No, huh. Pardon.’’

‘’Fine. Pardon?’’

‘’When you were repeating- ‘’ Princess Arya’s ‘’-your siblings’ names. You said that there’s something incorrect about them.’’

‘’Oh, that.’’ She stays silent for a moment and he turns his head slightly to glance at her. In the darkness he can only see the outline of her body, its hills and valleys under the blanket. He can paint the rest in his mind; Arry in a white nightdress, her feet bare and hair loose. Warm and pink.

He shivers slightly and pulls his own blanket higher under his chin.

‘’I just think there is something missing. Or rather someone. There should be one more person, before Robb.’’

Gendry’s heart loses its rhythm in his chest.

‘’Have you read about this person somewhere?’’ he asks cautiously, but he somehow already know what her answer will be.

‘’No. All the books you gave me name five royal children. Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon.’’

He’s glad for the darkness, cause just as it shields her from him, it also shields him from her. So she cannot see how he’s staring at the ceiling, internal battle tearing him apart.

‘’There was.. there was one more Stark child.’’

She sits up so abruptly that she bumps her head against the top bunk of her bed and groans.

‘’What? If so, why didn’t you-‘’

‘’His name was Jon. He was King Ned’s bastard son, that’s why he’s not in the books. Not worth mentioning.’’ Gendry’s voice drops to a whisper. ‘’He was also not very popular at the court. There is not much to know about him, anyway. They sent him to the military before the Revolution and he died at war.’’

Gendry can hear her sharp inhale. He doesn’t dare to look in her direction.

‘’Well, it was stupid of you not to mention him anyway. What if Princess Sansa asked me about her – about our forth brother and I wouldn’t know what she’s talking about?’’

Gendry knows Arry is right. He doesn’t know himself why he told Davos not to inform her about the existence of the Bastard Prince.

(Only, it’s a complete lie, because he does know. Because Princess Arya was rumored to have a lot of affection for Jon, going as far as calling him her favorite brother. Out of all her siblings, he would be probably the most difficult for her to forget. Which meant- which could mean that-)

‘’Jon.’’ She flops back on the mattress. ‘’Jon. Robb. Sansa. Bran. Rickon.’’

Gendry remains silent, hands clenched into fists.

‘’Yes.’’ She sighs sleepily against her pillow. ‘’Yes, now it sounds right.’’

***

He is sure he has suffered through the worst of it; through history and etiquette lessons, through her terrible table manners and sailor’s mouth, through getting out of Russia and getting to Paris.

He thinks that he and Davos actually managed to transform dirty orphan Arry into a well-educated, bright and charming Princess Arya, or at least, a very good imitation of her. She doesn’t keep her elbows on the table anymore, can recite the whole family tree of the Starks three centuries back and is an excellent cyvasse player.

And he… enjoys her company. Somehow.

So the dancing lesson takes him by a complete surprise.

‘’Come on, lad, pull her closer! I could’ve fit another couple in-between you.’’ Davos barks and he sounds far too gleeful for Gendry’s taste. ‘’Her Majesty is doing splendidly. Maybe she should be the one instructing you, huh?’’

Arry laughs at that, gracefully spinning underneath Gendry’s arm. Her blue dress swirls around her bare calves when she turns.

It’s really pretty. It looked good on the hanger in the shop when he was picking it out, but now that she’s wearing it – now that she’s wearing it, it has completely transformed into something truly beautiful.

‘’One, two, three. One, two, three.’’ Davos counts, but it sounds distant somehow.

All Gendry can really hear is his own heartbeat and the slide of silk against her skin; all he can really feel is the smell of her hair and her perfume, light and fresh. Where did she get it?

Left and right and backward and forward, they waltz to the music from a borrowed gramophone in their hotel room. Arry avoids looking down at her feet by staring right into his eyes as instructed, and it somehow makes him feel both hot and cold, uncomfortable and hungry.

After two rounds, they no longer step on each other’s feet and simply go through the motions, silently moving around each other. Closer. And closer.

She’s so confident now, no longer skittish like a deer. There is not a single ounce of shyness on her face. Only curiosity… curiosity and a dash of awe.

One, two, three, one, two, three, left and right and backward and forward and spin.

His fingers itch to caress her blushed cheeks, to brush stray strands of hair from her forehead.

One, two, three, one, two, three, left and right and backward and forward and spin.

His hand fits in the dip of her waist perfectly.

This smell… light and fresh. Nothing with flowers. More like a wind – like pines, like snow –

There is no snow in Paris, it’s ridiculous, pull yourself together Gendry, for fuck’s sake

‘’I think Davos went to sleep.’’ Arya whispers and Gendry abruptly stops moving, making her lose her balance and bump against his chest, their legs tangling together.

He glances at the empty armchair above her head. You old fox

‘’Yeah. It’s – it’s probably late. I think we practiced enough.’’ He lets out through clenched teeth, looking down at her still in the circle of his arms.

Arry bites on her lip and there’s this overwhelming desire in Gendry, wild and dazzling, to just reach out and pull it from in-between her teeth, to just press his mouth to her instead, to make her moan and gasp the way she sometimes does in her sleep and I am forced to listen and do nothing, nothing at all, cause this is just a con, and she is just a girl, and none of this is even real.

‘’Goodnight, Your Majesty.’’ He drops her hands and leaves, leaves as fast as he can.

***

‘’You’re playing a dangerous game, lad.’’

‘’I don’t know what you mean.’’

‘’Oh, young hearts. They want what they want, truly.’’

‘’Fuck off and let me sleep, won’t you?’’

***

Gendry finds her on a bridge next to the hotel. She’s staring at the Seine lazily passing down below, humming to herself this strange lullaby, as she always seems to when she’s feeling uncertain.

Far away, long ago, burning dim as an ember

‘’Stressed?‘’ he asks, softly, so as not to startle her.

But maybe she knows his steps just as well as he knows hers by now, because, when she turns around to face him, she doesn’t look surprised at all.

It fits her, all of this. The beautiful dresses they obtained through Countess Shireen. Hair bows and pearls. Fine silk stockings.

Her hair reaches past shoulder blades now, curling at the ends a bit. Even when they are messed by a wind, she’s still every inch an image of a princess. Every inch of her perfect and enchanting.

‘’A bit. ‘’ Arry admits. ‘’Tomorrow, I might get everything I’ve ever wanted. But I can also find out that this-‘’ she gestures down at the pink skirt of her gown and her shiny shoes. ‘’-is just a lie. That I’m a lie. I can break this woman’s heart.’’

Gendry takes a few steps to stand next to her, leaning on the railing by her side.

‘’I just wish I could feel like Princess Arya. She’s still somehow a foreign person to me.’’ She raises her eyes to the outline of the Eiffel Tower at the horizon, harsh black lines against sky bleeding with a setting sun.

And the resolve that Gendry kept inside his heart for fifteen long years breaks.

‘’I saw her, once. When I was twelve.’’

Arry whips her head towards him, mouth opened in shock, but Gendry’s firmly staring down at the dark river, lost in the memories.

‘’There was a parade in Saint Petersburg. It was hot, especially in a crowd – I think it must’ve been June or July. Royal family rode in a carriage, surrounded by guards, but I was tall for my age, and quick; I ran along, hoping for a glimpse of them. There were rumors that they wear clothes made of gold.’’ He chuckles quietly. ‘’And then there was some commotion on the street, so the carriage stopped. And I saw her.’’

Her, not you. His hands grip railing tighter, but Arry doesn’t seem to notice.

‘’How did she look like?’’ she asks, her voice shaking like a leaf on a wind.

‘’She was wriggling in her seat like a worm. I think Princess Sansa was scolding her, but she didn’t seem to listen. She kept on waving to the people and, for just a second, our eyes met.’’

He remembers it so well. Ever since he Arry appeared in his life, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about that day, how it made him feel everything at once; how such an insignificant thing turned his world upside down.

This image of a little princess, so joyful and so vibrant, has kept him warm through many long nights. And the thought that such a bright light was snuffed out in a bloody basement so easily, made him the person he is now. There is nothing beautiful in this world, not a single thing he can protect or preserve. Nothing.

Or, so he thought. Until another pair of gleaming eyes gazed into his.

‘’She had – she had such beautiful eyes. Such happy eyes. I had never seen eyes like that before.’’

The silence falls between them for a moment, before Arry inhales deeply.

‘’A parade in June.’’ She says. ‘’In Saint Petersburg.’’

‘’That’s right.’’

‘’Crowded streets. ‘’ she closes her eyes. ‘’It was hot, not a cloud on the sky. I was riding with my family and everyone was cheering for us and Sansa kept on telling me to sit down, but I wanted to see better. I wanted to see all those people, to thank them for coming to see us.’’

Her skin turns honey-golden when the sun submerges into the Seine.

‘’Then the boy caught my eye. Tall and skinny. Dark-haired. He looked at me with those pretty blue eyes…. and bowed.’’

Boom. The church bells ring.

Boom. His heart hammers in his chest.

Boom. Arya spins on her feet and looks at him, wide-eyed.

‘’I didn’t tell you that.’’ escapes from in-between his stiff lips.

‘’I know.’’ she takes his hands in hers, cool from the metal railing and trembling. ‘’I remember.’’

Boom.

He drops to his knees.

***

The worst thing is, he should be happy.

He should be happy, cause he is about to become filthy rich; no more sleeping on the streets, no more struggling, stealing, running away. He is in France and there is a whole wide world ahead of him. Their impossible, half-cooked plan actually worked and it seems like they somehow, by some insane miracle, actually did not con anyone at all.

They delivered Princess Arya to her sister. She finally had a place where she could belong. The family she dreamt about her whole life.

And for this good, good deed, Gendry is going to be rewarded with a pile of gold.

So, he should be fucking overjoyed.

‘’I don’t want it.’’ He says to Princess Arya’s butler. The man looks as if he did not understand Gendry’s Russian, so he repeats in French. ‘’I don’t want the money.’’

‘’But sir, Princess Sansa-‘’

‘’Please tell her that – that the joy of her sister is a big enough reward for me. I don’t want this money.’’

Arya, in the opera, in this night-sky-dress sparkling with diamonds and falling down her body like a waterfall. The line of her spine and her shoulder blades moving underneath her skin. The smell of her hair; pine and fresh snow.

Her happy grey eyes.

A silver tiara atop her head.

He wants nothing to do with the Starks, nothing at all.

***

‘’So, you didn’t take the money.’’

‘’I didn’t.’’

‘’Why?’’

How can you ask me this?

‘’I didn’t feel like taking them.’’

‘’That’s not an answer.’’

‘’Yes, it is.’’

‘’No, it isn’t!’’

‘’Yes, it is! Gods, Arya, can you, for once in your life, not make it difficult for me?’’

He doesn’t know what she’s doing here, standing in front of his hotel in the pouring rain and letting it soak her to the bone. He would offer her his umbrella or a coat, if he wasn’t so angry at her.

She has her sister now, what is she looking for here?

‘’I just want to know why you didn’t take the money.’’ She stubbornly repeats. Droplets slide down her cheeks like tears. ‘’Tell me that and I’ll let you go.’’

‘’Oh, and what’s stopping me know, Your Majesty? Did you bring your guards with you, ordering to stop me from leaving if you won’t get what you want from me?’’ he snarls and regrets it the moment the words drop in no man’s land between them.

Arya’s face breaks and she takes a step back as if he slapped her.

‘’You know I didn’t, Gendry.’’ She sounds awfully small, looks awfully small in a wet dress and with her hair plastered to her head and neck.

Desperation does ugly things with a person, Princess.

‘’I’m leaving Paris, Your Majesty. I wish you all the happiness.’’ He says stiffly and steps on the street, passing Arya with his suitcase in one hand and an umbrella in another.

‘’No.’’

He wants to weep. He knows her. How could he believe it would be so simple?

Arya has her arms wrapped around his waist, her face pressed to his back. He can feel shivers running through her body.

‘’Please, Gendry. Please. Tell me why.’’ She whispers and his blood boils in his veins, coloring the Paris red in front of his eyes.

‘’Because you are not a transaction to me!’’ he shouts desperately, turning around to face her. His hands grab her shoulders; the umbrella and the suitcase drop to the pavement and the cold rain viciously attack all exposed parts of his body. He cannot find it in himself to care about that, not even a bit. ‘’Because maybe it started as a con, but it isn’t and it’s – it’s you, Arya. It’s you and I cannot pretend anymore that I don’t care, because I do. I care so much. And you’re a princess and I’m just me and this can never work, and I-‘’

Her lips are cold and wet against his. He tastes salt on them; salt, pine, and snow.

His hands fit around her waist perfectly.

His stubborn, impossible princess, laughing, when she embraces him.

***

Dear Sansa,

I am so sorry for leaving so quickly after we reunited, but you know yourself I was never suited to be a princess. It seems that I have found myself a family even before I met you again. I cannot abandon him now.

Wish me luck! We’ll be in Paris together soon, I promise.

I hope you’ll understand. After all, you’ve always loved grand stories of romance.

Your little sister,

Arya.

#gendrya #gendrya fanfiction #gendryaweek2020 #gendryaweek #gendrya week 2020 #gendrya week #gendrya fic

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science-criticaltheory · 3 years

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John le Carré

David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 1931 – 12 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré (/ləˈkæreɪ/), was a British author, who took Irish citizenship towards the end of his life, best known for his espionage novels. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). His third novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works.

Writing

Le Carré's first two novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962), are mystery fiction. Each features a retired spy, George Smiley, investigating a death; in the first book, the apparent suicide of a suspected communist, and in the second volume, a murder at a boy's public school. Although Call for the Dead evolves into an espionage story, Smiley's motives are more personal than political. Le Carré's third novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works; following its publication, he left MI6 to become a full-time writer. Although le Carré had intended The Spy Who Came in from the Cold as an indictment of espionage as morally compromised, audiences widely viewed its protagonist, Alec Leamas, as a tragic hero. In response, le Carré's next book, The Looking Glass War, was a satire about an increasingly deadly espionage mission which ultimately proves pointless.

Most of le Carré's books are spy stories set during the Cold War (1945–91) and portray British Intelligence agents as unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged more in psychological than physical drama. The novels emphasise the fallibility of Western democracy and of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of east–west moral equivalence. They experience little of the violence typically encountered in action thrillers and have very little recourse to gadgets. Much of the conflict is internal, rather than external and visible. The recurring character George Smiley, who plays a central role in five novels and appears as a supporting character in four more, was written as an "antidote" to James Bond, a character le Carré called "an international gangster" rather than a spy and who he felt should be excluded from the canon of espionage literature. In contrast, he intended Smiley, who is an overweight, bespectacled bureaucrat who uses cunning and manipulation to achieve his ends, as an accurate depiction of a spy.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People (the Karla trilogy) brought Smiley back as the central figure in a sprawling espionage saga depicting his efforts first to root out a mole in the Circus and then to entrap his Soviet rival and counterpart, code-named Karla. The trilogy was originally meant to be a long-running series that would find Smiley dispatching agents after Karla all around the world. Smiley's People marked the last time Smiley featured as the central character in a le Carré story, although he brought the character back in The Secret Pilgrim and A Legacy of Spies.

A Perfect Spy (1986), which chronicles the boyhood moral education of Magnus Pym and how it leads to his becoming a spy, is the author's most autobiographical espionage novel, reflecting the boy's very close relationship with his con man father. Biographer LynnDianne Beene describes the novelist's own father, Ronnie Cornwell, as "an epic con man of little education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values". Le Carré reflected that "writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised". He also wrote a semi-autobiographical work, The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971), as the story of a man's midlife existential crisis.

With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, le Carré's writing shifted to portrayal of the new multilateral world. His first completely post-Cold War novel, The Night Manager (1993), deals with drug and arms smuggling in the murky world of Latin American drug lords, shady Caribbean banking entities, and western officials who look the other way.

As a journalist, le Carré wrote The Unbearable Peace (1991), a nonfiction account of Brigadier Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (1911–1992), the Swiss Army officer who spied for the Soviet Union from 1962 until 1975.

Credited under his pen name, le Carré appears as an extra in the 2011 film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, among the guests at the Christmas party in several flashback scenes. He allegedly coined the espionage terms "mole" and "honey trap" (the latter referring to the use of female agents by both sides to blackmail male civil servants). Le Carre records a number of incidents from his period as a diplomat in his autobiographical work, The Pigeon Tunnel. Stories from My Life (2016), which include escorting six visiting German parliamentarians to a London brothel and translating at a meeting between a senior German politician and Harold Macmillan.

Politics

Le Carré feuded with Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses, stating that "nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity".

In January 2003, two months prior to the invasion, The Times published le Carré's essay "The United States Has Gone Mad" criticising the buildup to the Iraq War and President George W. Bush's response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, calling it "worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War" and "beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams". Le Carré participated in the London protests against the Iraq War. He said the war resulted from the "politicisation of intelligence to fit the political intentions" of governments and "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history".

He was critical of Tony Blair's role in taking Britain into the Iraq War, saying "I can't understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretences has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed".

Le Carré was critical of Western governments' policies towards Iran. He believed Iran's actions are a response to being "encircled by nuclear powers" and by the way in which "we ousted Mosaddeq through the CIA and the Secret Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret police force in all the black arts, the SAVAK".

In 2017, le Carré expressed concerns over the future of liberal democracy, saying "I think of all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it's contagious, it's infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There's an encouragement about". He later wrote that the end of the Cold War had left the West without a coherent ideology, in contrast to the "notion of individual freedom, of inclusiveness, of tolerance – all of that we called anti-communism" prevailing during that time.

Le Carré opposed both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, arguing that their desire to seek or maintain their countries' superpower status caused an impulse "for oligarchy, the dismissal of the truth, the contempt, actually, for the electorate and for the democratic system". Le Carré compared Trump's tendency to dismiss the media as "fake news" to the Nazi book burnings, and wrote that the United States is "heading straight down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism".

Le Carré was an outspoken advocate of European integration and sharply criticised Brexit. Le Carré criticised Conservative politicians such as Boris Johnson (whom he referred to as a "mob orator"), Dominic Cummings, and Nigel Farage in interviews, claiming that their "task is to fire up the people with nostalgia [and] with anger". He further opined in interviews that "What really scares me about nostalgia is that it's become a political weapon. Politicians are creating a nostalgia for an England that never existed, and selling it, really, as something we could return to", noting that with "the demise of the working class we saw also the demise of an established social order, based on the stability of ancient class structures". On the other hand, he said that in the Labour Party "they have this Leninist element and they have this huge appetite to level society."

On Brexit, le Carré did not mince his words, comparing it to the 1956 Suez crisis which confirmed post-imperial Britain's loss of global power. "This is without doubt the greatest catastrophe and the greatest idiocy that Britain has perpetrated since the invasion of Suez," le Carré said of Brexit. "Nobody is to blame but the Brits themselves - not the Irish, not the Europeans". "The idea, to me, that at the moment we should imagine we can substitute access to the biggest trade union in the world with access to the American market is terrifying," he said.

Speaking to The Guardian in 2019, he commented "I've always believed, though ironically it's not the way I've voted, that it's compassionate conservatism that in the end could, for example, integrate the private schooling system. If you do it from the left you will seem to be acting out of resentment; do it from the right and it looks like good social organisation." Le Carré also said that "I think my own ties to England were hugely loosened over the last few years. And it's a kind of liberation, if a sad kind."

In Le Carré's final novel Agent Running in the Field, one of the novel's characters refers to Trump as "Putin's shithouse cleaner" who "does everything for little Vladi that little Vladi can't do for himself". The novel's narrator describes Boris Johnson as "a pig-ignorant foreign secretary". He says Russia is moving "backwards into her dark, delusional past", with Britain following a short way behind. Le Carré later said that he believed the novel's plotline, involving the U.S. and British intelligence services colluding to subvert the European Union, to be "horribly possible."

#John le Carré #cold war #us wars of aggression #democracy #biography

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dweemeister · 4 years

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“Women Make Film” marathon reviews (2/?)

Sleepwalking Land (2007, Mozambique)

From 1977 to 1992, Mozambique was in a state of civil war. Mozambique, situated in Africa’s southeast corner above South Africa and separated by a channel from Madagascar, still reckons with the human, political, and social legacies of that conflict. Exacerbated by the Soviet Union and the anti-communist Apartheid South Africa (both meddling for influence in Mozambican affairs), the war quickly reached a conclusion as those foreign regimes disintegrated. In the final year of the Mozambican Civil War, author Mia Couto published an acclaimed magical realism novel, Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land), that takes place with the war as a backdrop. Couto’s book inspired a film adaptation by Teresa Prata – Portuguese-born, Mozambican-raised, and now living in Germany.

Sleepwalking Land is Prata’s first feature film as a director. She was mesmerized by Couto’s book, saying that memories of the war rushed through her head while reading. Believing the text to be deeply cinematic, she spent seven years to complete this adaptation of Sleepwalking Land. The final print is a film difficult to categorize. Comprised of two parallel narratives, Prata has the narratives blend into the other as the film progresses. Its magical realism elements only appear in the final half-hour of the film. One scene in particular will most likely shock, if not offend, Western viewers. But the actions in that scene are considered a traditional behavior in Mozambique (something that I shall explain later in this write-up). Central to Sleepwalking Land is the idea that storytelling is integral to survival – especially as the innocent trod through their war-torn homeland.

In the Mozambican countryside, we encounter eleven-year-old Muidinga (Nick Lauro Teresa) and a much older man named Tuahir (Aladino Jasse). Their relationship is unclear, but Muidinga refers to Tuahir as “Uncle” (if the film’s dialogue is to be believed, they are probably not related). Muidinga wishes to find his mother, but the search has been fruitless. The young refugee also appears not to remember much about his life before his journeys with Tuahir; he cannot even recall how he and Tuahir met. The elderly Tuahir is a storyteller who makes clear his desire to leave the past behind – the audience learns almost nothing about that past by film’s end. This duo has been wandering the countryside, but one day stumble upon the wreckage of a torched bus. They bury the charred bodies of those who died in their seats, salvage a diary from one of the victims, and take shelter in the bus (“What is already burnt cannot burn again.”) Muidinga reads from the diary (Tuahir is illiterate), and learns that the writer is a woman searching for her missing son. He believes, however unlikely, he is that very son and that the writer is his mother.

If the viewer expects details about the Mozambican Civil War itself, just note that those details never appear. Prata elects to keep the affiliations of the roving militias as ambiguous as possible. Like Couto’s text, this film adaptation of Sleepwalking Land has not taken any sides or political stances – save the notion that war is solely a destructive force. But it is not war itself that Sleepwalking Land focuses on, but how its central characters respond to the traumas it has unleashed on their lives. Muidinga and Tuahir enter the film with unrevealed, if not unknowable, pasts. “You don’t even have a story,” Tuahir tells the young boy.

Muidinga responds by creating his own life story, however fantastical. He is reborn; the particulars of the civil war, the loss of his parents, and the famine that affected Mozambique prior to this rebirth is fully removed from his lived experiences. Muidinga’s imagination leads the film into its magical realism. Having never seen the ocean and despite being nowhere near the beach, Muidinga transports himself and Tuahir there – without ever leaving the bus. Muidinga has broken the inescapable cycle that has trapped him and Tuahir. Upon this development, Tuahir realizes that the young boy he has been accompanying has learned all that he needs to survive in desperate, nightmarish times. In each of these scenes, Paulo Rebelo’s (2000’s O Fantasma) editing does well to transition between the scenes depicting the diary entries the roundabout travels of Muidinga and Tuahir, lending a documentary-like feel to the latter.

Plot-hungry viewers will probably demand for explanations for Muidinga’s amnesia and Tuahir’s past, but the film refuses to provide any answers. To those viewers: stop resisting the film’s refusal to accommodate your expectations, and allow it to tell its story on its own terms.

And as for expectations, one shocking scene in Sleepwalking Land will undoubtedly startle Western audiences and requires explanation for anybody reading this review after viewing the film. The behavior in that scene is custom in Mozambique. In Mozambique, young boys and girls are “initiated” by elder men and women, respectively, as they reach puberty. In a secluded environment, the elders will teach the young ones about sexuality. Sexual initiation of Mozambican children was banned by the left-wing FRELIMO party after securing independence from Portugal and establishing one-party control. FRELIMO argued that initiation rites promoted female subservience; their many critics dismissed this as simplistic, saying that the rites provided women with sexual education they might not otherwise get.

The ban on initiation rites has long been lifted in Mozambique, though the practice is no longer as prominent as it used to be. In keeping with the film’s fidelity to Mozambican culture at this time, Prata includes Muidinga’s initiation in this film. The scene is filmed obliquely, in a matter-of-fact way. The audience never sees anything graphic and Tuahir’s verbal descriptions are innocuous, but the implication of what he is doing to Muidinga is clear. Prata, a child of both Africa and Europe, could not have filmed this scenario with any greater respect to her actors and the cultures she was raised in. For Western viewers like myself, it is one of more than a few teaching moments in Sleepwalking Land.

The film’s two leads in Nick Lauro Teresa and Aladino Jasse are both non-professional actors. Their acting might not be the most accomplished, but the dynamic between the two is a joy to watch. Though they probably are not related, their characters have an asymmetric emotional intimacy understandable considering their situation. In what might have been a dour, overlong experience, Teresa and Jasse inject enough charm and humor to keep Sleepwalking Land bearable. The same cannot be written for the parallel story fronted by Kindzu (Helio Fumo) and Farida (Ilda Gonzalez), which throws the film’s narrative propulsion off-balance whenever Teresa and Jasse are not on-screen. To everyone’s credit, the acting ensemble helps Sleepwalking Land feel like a vivid dream – from the silences paired with the rural landscapes, the decisional logic, and the film’s impossible conclusion (but it is one that, mind you, works).

Though Sleepwalking Land has made appearances in film festival across the world, it – and Teresa Prata’s career (this is Prata’s most recent movie, and by what is provided in Sleepwalking Land, I would like to see much more from her) – has never found much traction. I may not have read Couto’s novel prior to viewing this film (the novel is available in an English translation), but its novelistic overtures are felt throughout the film. The blending of narratives flows like something from a printed page, rather than quickly edited into yet another one of Christopher Nolan’s moviemaking mazes. From its humble, low-budget origins, Sleepwalking Land is composed in its singular artistic vision and confident about the depth of human endurance.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

NOTE #1: This is the second of an unspecified amount of film reviews on this blog relating to films that I saw as part of Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) Women Make Film marathon.

NOTE #2: Sleepwalking Land is currently available to watch on YouTube for free. The print includes English subtitles in the closed-captioning options.

#Sleepwalking Land #Teresa Prata #Nick Lauro Teresa #Aldino José #Hélio Fumo #Ilda Gonzalez #Laura Soveral #Dominique Gentil #Mia Couto #Women Make Film #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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