DVD: Victoria and Abdul

The movie Victoria and Abdul portrays the unusual friendship which developed between Queen Victoria of England and an Indian Muslim servant, Abdul Karim. This relationship was to cause scandal and intense jealousy among the Victorian British aristocrats and royalty of the time. It was largely forgotten mainly because after Queen Victoria's death, all of the correspondence between Abdul and Victoria over a thirteen year period was destroyed by members of the Royal family.

Almost immediately after the elderly monarch's funeral, Queen Victoria's daughter Beatrice and her daughter-in-law - King Albert's wife - Queen Alexandra walked to Frogmore Cottage - the home of Abdul Karim and his family-  on the grounds of Windsor Castle. They burst into the home and forced Abdul's wife to hand over the letters Queen Victoria had sent him. The house was searched by accompanying guards and any letters, correspondence, notes, and postcards were removed, and thrown into a bonfire on the lawn. Abdul and his wife were summarily deported the next day to India. Albert had finally erased all evidence of Abdul Karim from his family's history. Or so he thought.

The story of their unique friendship might never have come to light if it were not for Indian author and journalist, Shrabani Basu. On a visit to Osborne House on Isle of Wight to see the newly restored Durbar Room, Basu couldn't help noticing the several portraits of Abdul Karim, especially one by Rudolf Swoboda. Although she initially thought he was an Indian servant of the late Queen, Basu noticed that Abdul was portrayed as a nobleman. Her interest piqued, Basu began her research, a task that would take her to three countries over a period of five years. First she discovered the late monarch's thirteen Hindustani journals, written in Urdu, a language the queen had learned to read and write from Abdul. The journals, which were kept in the Royal Archives, had never been translated. Basu also located a few surviving pieces of correspondence written by Queen Victoria to Abdul and read the personal diaries of her physician, Sir James Reid as well as the correspondence of the Royal household, the Viceroys of India and many other letters written by the monarch.

Rudolf Swoboda's portrait of Abdul Karim

 To learn more, Basu travelled to Agra, India where she located Abdul's abandoned and derelict tombstone and she also discovered the house that Abdul had built on land given to him by Queen Victoria. However, the family was no longer living there and the house was occupied by a Hindu family who informed her that Abdul Karim's family had moved to Pakistan after the 1947 Partition of India.

Basu returned to England and in 2010 published her book about Abdul and the Queen, Victoria and Abdul: The True Story of the Queen's Closest Confidant.  Eventually she was contacted by the great nephew of Abdul who told her that the family in Karachi, Pakistan had possession of Abdul's journal. From this journal, Basu was able to piece together the long-forgotten story of Abdul Karim and his thirteen-year friendship with Queen Victoria. It was a story King Edward VII and the royal court attempted to wipe away when his wife, Queen Alexandra and Princess Beatrice arrived at the home of Abdul after Queen Victoria's death.

Victoria and Abdul, directed by Stephen Frears is based on Basu's book. The  movie  begins Abdul's story in Agra in 1887 with Britain having formally ruled India for twenty-nine years at this point. Abdul Karim, who is seen recording the names of criminals, is called to the Government office to see Mr. Tyler. Tyler thanks Abdul for the carpets he chose to be sent to the British Exhibition and states that the Governor General has decided to present the Queen with a "Mohur" as part of the Jubilee. To present this coin, Abdul and another Indian have been chosen to travel to England. While Abdul is excited at this prospect, Mohammed intimates that he was forced to make the journey.

In England, Abdul and Mohammed have authentic uniforms tailored for them and after being instructed on how the evening at Windsor Castle will proceed, they are warned not to look directly at the Queen. This is an instruction Abdul disobeys as he is backing away from the queen. The next day as Abdul and Mohammed are readying to leave England and return to India, Mr. Bigge arrives to inform them that they will be remaining in England. Eventually the two are made the Queen's personal footmen.

As Queen Victoria spends time with Abdul she learns about his family, about the beauty of India including the Taj Mahal and the Peacock Throne, but also about the pillaging of these national treasures by the British. Abdul tells her about spices and Indian food including garam masala, Dal rogan josh and chutney made of mango. And Abdul begins to teach the Queen how to speak and write Urdu, the language of the poets.When Queen Victoria reveals her loneliness and sadness and that she no longer sees a purpose for her life, Abdul tells her  life is about service. He quotes a verse from the Koran, telling the Queen, "We are here for the good of others."and reveals himself to be a Muslim.  Abdul tells Queen Victoria that he is a Muslim and that his father was his munshi - his teacher. Inspired by his words, Queen Victoria requests that Abdul become her munshi, to teach her the Koran, Urdu and anything else he can think of.

But Queen Victoria's growing friendship with Abdul, her learning to read and write Urdu, and her bestowing honors and titles on him, lead to resistance, jealousy and plotting within the royal household to get rid of Abdul.

Discussion

Victoria and Abdul is a fascinating film about a little known friendship during the reign of Queen Victoria. The movie stars Judi Dench as Queen Victoria, Ali Fazil who portrays Abdul Karim, Adeel Akhar who is Mohammed Buksh, Michael Gambon as the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury and Tim Pigott-Smith as the Queen's Private Secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby. Eddie Izzard looks remarkably like his character, Bertie, The Prince of Wales and the future King Edward VII. And for Dench, it's not the first time she's portrayed Queen Victoria; she starred in Mrs. Brown, a film about her deep friendship with John Brown, a Scottish servant.

The film is "based on real events - mostly" as a disclaimer states in the opening scenes. Most of what is portrayed in the film, Abdul's unusually intimate friendship with Victoria, her learning Urdu, and the racist and jealous attitudes towards Abdul are accurate.  However, Director Frears does take some liberties. For example, Abdul did not travel to England to present the Queen with a newly minted medal but came to England because Queen Victoria requested two Indian attendants for her Golden Jubilee celebrations. While Queen Victoria is portrayed as a racially tolerant woman, she was British and the British ruled over India with policies that created serious racial and religious tensions on the Indian subcontinent. The Victorian court and Victorian society viewed people of colour as unequals and social policies reflected this belief. The British attitude is subtly portrayed throughout the film; for example when Arthur Bigge sets foot back in England, he remarks, "Civilization!" even though England, like India has a strict class system and plenty of beggars - as shown on the docks.

Abdul (left) and Mohammed (right)

In the film, Victoria is portrayed as quite ignorant of the culture and beauty of India, despite that fact that one of her titles is Empress of India. This may have been because, as she explains in the film to Abdul, she has never visited India due to fears that she would be assassinated. Abdul tells her about the spices and foods of India, garam masala and chutney made of mango - fruit Victoria is determined to sample.

Abdul tells her the story behind the building of the Taj Mahal in Agra, but he also tells her that the jewels of this historic and important site were stolen by the British. He enthralls the Queen with his descriptions of the Peacock Throne which he claims was smashed by the British as a punishment for the Indian rebellion. In the film Queen Victoria is portrayed as being quite dismayed at the destruction of the Peacock Throne and the vandalism of the Taj Mahal, however, these actions were likely seen as justified by the British and occurred while Victoria was Queen.

Nevertheless, Abdul was able to influence the Queen to learn something of Indian culture, so much so that she even created her own Durbar Room at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She commissioned John Lockwood Kipling and Sikh artisan Bhai Ram Singh to decorate the room which was filled mostly with gifts from Indian princes.

The Indian view of Queen Victoria and the British is presented in the film through the character of Mohammed Buksh. While Abdul is thrilled to be traveling to England to meet Queen Victoria, Mohammed is not impressed because she is someone who has "oppressed the entire Indian subcontinent". Mohammed often makes humorous but accurate statements about the British throughout, and he is shown as refusing to help Bertie and other members of the royal household when they ask for help in forcing Abdul to return to India. His derision towards Bertie is marked and representative of the growing resentment of the Indian people towards the British.

Overall though Victoria and Abdul is an entertaining film that opens a window into the very end of the Victorian era. Frears was able to film on location in many of the original settings including Osborne House, Balmoral Castel and Glen Affric and the cinematography captures the beauty of these places admirably.

Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown

Rare Treasure tells the story of the greatest "fossilist" of all time - Mary Anning of Lyme Regis in Dorset, England. Mary was born on May 21, 1799 to a cabinetmaker who supplemented his income by selling the strange finds from the fossil beds by the town. Although Mary's parents, Richard and Molly had ten children, only Mary and her brother Joseph survived to adulthood.

When Mary was a toddler, she was with a group of women watching an equestrian show when a storm blew up. The women took shelter beneath a tree when it was struck by lightning. Only Mary survived. This event seemed to mark a change in Mary who grew into a lively child full of curiosity.  Although Mary learned to read and write, she never received much education. The Anning family was poor and because of war on the continent, (England was at war with France), there were often food shortages.

Lyme Regis soon became a tourist mecca for the English looking to get away from the polluted, dirty cities of the north.  Richard Anning took Mary and Joseph with him as he scoured the limestone and shale cliffs around Lyme Regis looking for fossils. They would then set up a table in the town and sell their finds to tourists.

In November 1810, Mary's father passed away, leaving the family in even more serious poverty. To supplement their income from the parish relief they received Mary continued to hunt for fossils on the cliffs of Lyme Regis. Over the years she built up a substantial business and a reputation.

Her first major find was in 1811 when she was twelve years old. Over the period of several months she and Joseph dug up a fossilized skeleton of an what would later be called an ichthyosaur. Other substantial finds included a pleisosaur  in 1823, a pterosaur in 1828 and a squaloraja in 1829.

Although Mary Anning had received little schooling she read scientific papers and even studied the anatomy of living creatures to better understand the fossils she was finding. She lived at a time when women had few rights, the could not vote and were not allowed entry into universities. Although she was often not given full credit for her discoveries, eventually her contributions to the field of paleontology was recognized by several prominent geologists of the time. Mary Anning's discoveries had a profound influence on how humans thought about the planet and its past. At the turn of the century, the belief that the Earth and everything in it was created in six days by God was common. However, the fossils that Mary Anning discovered were of creatures that no longer existed and they made scientists rethink the past and how the present came to be.

Mary Anning's sketch of a Plesiosaur, 1824

Rare Treasure is a well written, short account of Mary Anning's life. Brown is a capable storyteller, capturing the more important parts of Mary Anning's life; her family's struggles with poverty, the dangerous work of searching for fossils on the shore, the wonderful discoveries she made, and her desire to understand what she found.Although some of the obstacles Anning encountered are omitted, Brown does emphasize that Mary Anning came to be highly regarded by many prominent scientists of the day including William Buckland and Richard Owens.  The pen, ink and watercolour illlustrations of Don Brown are a wonderful supplement to the story of this intelligent and courageous English woman.

Rare Treasure is recommended for young readers, especially girls interested in dinosaurs, earth science or science in general.

Book Details:

Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company     1999

Every Hidden Thing by Kenneth Oppel

Every Hidden Thing is based on the the decades long feud between American two paleontologists, Edward Drinkwater Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh which took place in the middle of the 19th century. Their feud which became known as the "Bone Wars" saw both men attempt to outwit the other in the hunt for dinosaur fossils in the American Midwest. Their rivalry new no bounds and lasted until Cope's death in 1897. Canadian author Kenneth Oppel has used Marsh and Cope's rivalry as the basis for his story in Every Hidden Thing.

The story begins with Samuel Bolt's father, Professor Michael Bolt presenting his latest find at a meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Bolt is a gentleman scientist without a university education but well respected as a self-taught paleontologist. Professor Bolt is the second to discover a dinosaur in America - a partial skeleton, but enough that he could name it.

Also in attendance at this meeting is Professor Cartland from Yale. The self-taught Bolt is seen as an amateur by Cartland whose connections to Yale give him important status. It is at this meeting that Samuel Bolt meets the homely but highly intelligent Rachel Cartland, Professor Cartland's daughter, whom he finds most captivating. They spend a short time conversing, neither aware that the other is the child of their father's rival.

Bolt had been sent crates of bones by a dentist, Dr. Hawthorn of Kansas. From these bones, Bolt was able to reconstruct a skeleton of a large sea creature he named Elasmosaurus. However, during his presentation, Cartland informs Bolt and the audience that Bolt has erred in his reconstruction of the creature. He has placed the head of the Elasmosaurus on the wrong end, mistaking the long length of vertebrae as the tail when in fact it is the neck. Cartland picks up the skull and clicks it into place on the other end of the skeleton stating, "Which would indicate to me, Professor Bolt, that the tail is in fact the neck, and you have built your dinosaur backward, sir." This outrage leads to the two men brawling at the meeting.

The next morning Samuel discovers an unopened crate in his father's office. In the crate, Samuel and his father find the largest tooth they have ever seen as well as a note written nine weeks earlier by a fossil hunter named Edward (Ned) Plaskett. Plaskett writes that he located the large tooth northeast of Fort Crowe and is offering his services to help find the rest of the fossil. Samuel's father determines that a creature with such a large tooth would be bipedal and "of some fifty feet in length, whose height measured from the ground, would be in the area of thirty feet." Samuel, tells his father that this would be the king of dinosaurs, so Professor Bolt decides to partially name it rex.

Professor Bolt wants to simply telegraph Plaskett that he is hired but Samuel argues they should travel to Fort Crowe to find the rex themselves. However, lack of money is a huge problem because Samuel's father has used up all the capital from the sale of his inheritance. Samuel takes the initiative and at a Quaker's meeting tells the men he feels called to find God's creatures buried in the ground. The men take up a collection and raise enough for the Bolts to launch an expedition.

Meanwhile Professor Cartland and Rachel are on their summer expedition to the Western Territories. The Cartlands will have an army escort, twelve paying Yale students as well as free rail passes from Union Pacific. Initially Professor Cartland had decided that Rachel would stay in New Haven with her Aunt Berton attending picnics, church socials and a debutante ball. Rachel wants none of it; she wants to attend university and hunt fossils and the expedition offers her a chance to work towards that goal. When she's sent to her aunt, Rachel releases a snake in her aunt's bed and is sent home. With her father having no other alternative, Rachel joins him on the expedition.

Coincidentally, Samuel and Rachel meet up at Omaha Station to take the Union Pacific train heading out west, although neither party knows the exact destination of the other. Samuel continues to be completely enamored with Rachel. Their fathers set them both to spying on one another to try to determine their plans.  One of the Yale students appears to reveal to Professor Bolt that the Cartland's expedition is traveling to North Platte. This leads Samuel to tell Rachel about the tooth they have been sent by Plaskett. However the Bolts soon discover that the Cartland's destination is the same when they all leave the train in Crowe. To the frustration of the Bolts, they discover that Cartland has bought up almost all the supplies. When they finally meet up with Plaskett, his rough appearance at first worries Professor Bolt but he is determined to help them get to the badlands. While the Cartland's are burdened with their thirty soldiers and the Yale students, Samuel and his father along with Plaskett and a driver named Hitch Powers set out for the badlands. Samuel and his father set up camp and begin exploring. 

When Bolt discovers Cartland's expedition camped on the banks of the nearby river, he is furious and confronts Cartland. The two men agree that whoever finds a bone first owns the site which will be staked with a flag. The two men race to find the rex of dinosaurs against the backdrop of hostile Indians bent on recovering what was stolen from them. Meanwhile, Samuel and Rachel become increasingly infatuated with one another, leading them to make an outlandish choice to control their own destinies.

Discussion

Every Hidden Thing is a story loosely based on the intense rivalry between two American paleontologists in the mid to late 19th century. In the novel the rivalry is between two fictitious paleontologists, Professor Bolt and Professor Cartland, who are also loosely based on the real paleontologists, Edward Cope and O.C. Marsh. Other than their determination to find dinosaur fossils before the other, and to quickly name them, Oppel's story is very much different. In the novel Professor Bolt's son Samuel is portrayed as having discovered the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton after having a vision resulting from a rattlesnake bite. In fact, both Cope and Marsh did discover pieces of the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in the late 1890's but these pieces were not identified until much later in the 20th century. Although Cope married and had a child, Marsh never did.

Instead Oppel re-imagines the feud from the point of view of the two paleontologists' teenage children who form an alliance and eventually run off to get married. Samuel and Rachel share the storytelling in alternating narratives. The main strength of Oppel's story is the characters who are well crafted. Professor Bolt is described as a man who isn't "afraid to talk with his fists." Samuel describes his father as having a deranged look about him due to "his left eye had a slightly awkward angle to it..." Compared to Cartland, Bolt is a man with a bit more integrity who is deeply angered by Cartland's dishonest methods to obtain fossils. He also appears more willing to respect the Indians than his rival.

Cartland is the most vile of the characters, stealing from just about anyone he can. He is described as short and "solid as a potbellied stove" with "sparse hair" and a mustache.  Rachel mentions that her father has a "rather unfortunate verbal tic of saying 'yes yes' in the midst of his sentences. And it rarely meant he agreed with you." He doesn't support Rachel's ambition to attend university and become a scientist. He's bought off his rivals so they can supply him with information on fossil finds and has blocked Bolt's papers from being published. Cartland shows profound disrespect for the indigenous people of the plains when he desecrates an Indian burial site, chopping the heads off the bodies to take back for research. Thoroughly in a rage when he discovers his daughter has married Samuel Bolt, Cartland attempts to kidnap his daughter.

Samuel is portrayed as an awkward teen definitely not comfortable with his changing body. He is determined to make Rachel both trust and like him so he tells her about the large tooth fossil.  Rachel describes Samuel as being "tall, with a mop of wavy, coarse hair. He looked like one of those puppies that hadn't grown into its body yet but gave all the signs of its full size to come..." Samuel sees Rachel as a potential wife and partner, working together to hunt fossils and do research but he's confused by her lack of feeling towards him.

Rachel is not considered attractive and she knows it, often focusing on how she is rarely complimented about her appearance. "But without a mother I was never told I had lovely hair or a pleasing figure or striking eyebrows..." Samuel's compliment that she has "the most extraordinary eyes." make her feel special. She's also described by Samuel as being unromantic, "She was like a fortress. Impenetrable."  Rachel is determined to attend university even marrying Samuel in the hopes of achieving this goal despite not wanting to marry.

Oppel moves the story about a fossil hunting rivalry into one that focuses on Samuel and Rachel's awkward relationship. The story is somewhat contrived with Rachel being brought into the expedition after throwing a snake in her aunt's bed (really???) and the coincidental meeting at the train station. Their blossoming romance is in contrast to the violent rivalry between their fathers. To that end there is Samuel's description of how his body responds to Rachel  in a way that most readers really don't want to know. When he first meets Rachel Cartland, despite her being somewhat unattractive Samuel narrates how he becomes aroused. Why the author felt this was necessary is uncertain. When the two elope and end up in a hotel room on their wedding night, the reader is subjected to a three page detailed account of their struggles and awkwardness. It's possible Oppel felt this might attract the interest of teen readers, but it's done at the expense of the story telling and was completely unnecessary to the story. 

In contrast, Oppel's descriptions of the badlands are welcome and colourful. "The steep slopes showed all their ancient layers -- tawny, black, gray, red -- like the diagrams in Father's geology books...Some of the stepped buttes looked like Mayan temples. There were gaunt castles. Archways and spires of a great Gothic cathedral..." When they arrive in the badlands Samuel narrates, "It was surprisingly lush along the brown, slow-curving river lined with cottonwoods and tall grass and flowers. In the sun's low evening light, the stone was rich yellow and peach and purple. The wind made a pleasant dry rustle in the cottonwoods." The ravines are described with equal eloquence: "The ground was scattered with rocks of all shapes and sizes, gray basalt and pink granite and yellowy limestone and great speckled silver hunks and creamy pebbles, all broken and crushed by glaciers and rounded and smoothed by rivers over thousands of years. There were green sage and spiky cactus and clumps of perfectly spherical deer droppings."

For those readers with an interest in geology, this novel may initially seem intriguing. However, Samuel's wedding night narrative and the whole elopement subplot really distracts from the overall story. Readers truly interested in Tyrannosaurus rex and the rivalry between Cope and Marsh can learn more from the PBS website. Every Hidden Thing had such potential in the hands of such an accomplished author. Hopefully another author will make an attempt to portray this interesting rivalry in a way that will be more informative and less sensational than Every Hidden Thing.

The Marsh and Cope Rivalry: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/dinosaur-rivalry/

Book Details:

Every Hidden Thing by Kenneth Oppel
Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.    2016
361 pp.

Movie: Mr. Turner

This independent film, by English director, Mike Leigh, explores the last twenty-five years of arguably the greatest British painter, J.M.W.Turner. Joseph Mallard William Turner was born in 1775 to William Turner, a barber and wig maker. His mother suffered from mental illness and was eventually hospitalized. Her illness led to Turner being sent away to school. The senior Turner encouraged his son's artistic talent early on and his earliest drawings were sometimes sold from his father's barbershop.

Turner gained admittance to the Royal Academy schools in 1789 and advanced through them studying various art mediums. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1790 through to 1796. Turner often painted in water colours but he also mastered oil. His first exhibited oil painting was Fishermen at Sea. He was elected an Associate of the Academy in 1799 and an Academician in 1802.

Turner travelled all throughout England - Yorkshire and the Lake Distric as well as Wales, with the intent of improving his craft. During the Treaty of Amiens, in which the hostilities between the England and the French Republic ceased, Turner was able to travel to Paris and into the Alps and Switzerland. The Napoleonic Wars interrupted his travels on the continent but he did eventually travel to Italy in 1819. His travels in Italy, especially Venice, were to have a profound effect on his art.  He focused on the grandeur and violent power of nature, painting storms, avalanches, volcanic eruptions and fires.  He painted numerous marine scenes and even had himself lashed to the mast of a ship so he could capture the fury of a storm in his painting Steam Boat off a Harbour's Mouth making Signals in Shallow Water and going by the Lead. This obsession with the power of nature led to a gradual evolution in his art. Instead of representing form by line, Turner gradually utilized colour and light. In this regard he was ahead of his time, resulting in the public and fellow artists alike not understanding what he was attempting to accomplish.

Turner's father lived with him for thirty years and was his studio assistant. His father passed away in 1829 and his death affected him keenly. Turner never married but was believed to be the father of two daughters, Evelina and Georgiana by Sarah Danby. He lived with his mistress, Sophia Caroline Booth in Chelsea where he died in 1851.


The film, Mr. Turner is essentially a character sketch of the artist that focuses not so much on his art, as on his personal eccentricities. Well known British actor, Timothy Spall, who portrayed the famous painter spent considerable time preparing for the role. He spent two years under the tutelage of Tim Wright who taught Spall to paint like Turner. In total, Wright had him create three hundred pieces of art. That Spall succeeded is evident in scenes where he is painting - he really does appear to be accomplish. However, the paintings seen in close ups are the work of artist Charlie Cobb while those shown in the background are prints.

The movie picks up Turner's life as a middle-aged man living with his father.  Spall captures Turner's libertine ways, common to the Georgian age which comprised most of his life.  By the Victorian age, social mores were changing and after his death, John Ruskin who went through Turner's art supposedly found a great deal of erotic art which he claimed to have destroyed.

Spall was able to accurately portray some of Turner's supposed mannerisms including his grunts and snuffles that he was known to make while painting, although sometimes it was difficult to understand the dialogue between the accent and the grunts and snorts.

At times Mr. Turner lags; the pacing is slow through most of the movie, picking up towards the end. Leigh manages to show a Turner who is focused on his art, traveling about the country, sketching constantly, involved in the Academy and even lecturing. His housekeeper's declining health is well shown as we see Hannah who suffered from psoriasis, which was a greatly misunderstood condition in the 19th century, shunned and at a complete loss at his death.


This movie is Restricted in Canada mainly due to its somewhat limited, but graphic sexual content. Turner is shown visiting a brothel and there is also other sexual content in the movie.

Mr. Turner will definitely appeal to those interested in either the artist or the art of film and so it's likely your best bet to catch it before it goes to DVD is through film clubs.