26 enero 2014

Rip History

Where there's a good tasty history drama... Slomo Sand taught me with his 'Le XX siècle à l'écran' to take pride in saying "I learnt all I know from films". On the subject history I have always had a lot of immemories, but admit it, who doesn't? I certainly try to compensate for my lack of interest as a child in history; still today I come up each time with a period drama I'd rather spend my evening with, instead of a film based on today or tomorrow (looking retropectively towards cinema history, science fiction almost always looks better on paper).

I like history in shape of a fiction film or series partly due to the fact that my remembrance of (rigorous) history hour at school was a race against the other class which was always “a couple of decades ahead of us”; an effective excuse for our teacher to tin the story of mankind in three hours a week. Today, for me, history is great for having a timeline background if you are interested in understanding something; and you always have the web to find the relevant events that surrounded it, not that essential to really know it all, is it? Otherwise, I'd rather consume it in shape of novels or fiction films. Really, no shame in admitting that, once you take a look at a Spanish history book from the 1958 school curriculum; knowing that the generation who was made to believe that, is today ruling things anyways.

History with a pinch of fiction is the only way to re-create History (with a capital h), if you think about isn't it? I just finished tasting BBC history series 'Ripper Street' which has romance and is melodramatic to the core; both being most welcomed ingredients of my favourite gourmets. In the mix, an always refreshing but hard to combine touch of gore; all stewed together with a sprinkle of some great british humor. I devoured the 16 hours of Ripper Street during last month. I have to say, for being a rough piece of meat to swallow, it has not prevented a wonderful digestion.

Cast of Ripper Str. The line between the hero and the villain becomes thinner as the series develops
One of the fascinating things of this TV series is to discover its aromas... the 1890s is a fascinating and obscure time. The great empires of pre-modern Europe were vanishing while the population of the colonies' capitals were submerging in all sorts of undecent behaviours or keeping such idle and extravagant lifestyles that only a war could put end to... Great works of fiction were cooked under this stormy weather ('The picture of Dorian Gray' 1890 or' Dracula' 1897). This series takes superbly the temperature to the times not only in the infamous Londons' Whitechapel district with echos of what goes around in places far away such the morally repressed high society of New York af the 'Age of Innocence' or the exacervated expeditions that also frames Chaplin's 'The Gold Rush'. Not forgetting that it was also this time and place the cradle of what 'Dr. Zhivago' will suffer a couple of years later.

A part from putting under a magnifying glass London surrounding the birth of a yellow press obsessed with serial killers and elephant men, Ripper Street sets its day-to-day (or episode-to-episode) turns around profane and current issues such as marrital break-up, workaholism and brown-noserism, police and public administration corruption, drug and violence addiction, war trauma, even PTSD and of course, prostitution. Issues all drama series should touch, wrapped in the most best-selling genre of crime-fiction.

1 comentario:

Anónimo dijo...

uau, there it goes THE review..
goody job marranita, a must-watch after all so before more eternal Sherlock I may devote my 2D addiction on this ripper thingy!