pumpkinstrokemarrow

We thought the casting was good - Stiva & Betsy, for example, seemed spot on - but were struck by the Asiatic appearance of the two motherly types - Dolly & Kitty. A trait we did not notice in the ladies and gents of high society. One wonders whether Asiatic appearance is a good or a bad thing from a caste point of view: either way there must be plenty of it given Russia's long involvement with parts east. It also looked as if they had gone to a fair amount of trouble from a costume drama point of view. Authentic period furniture and all that sort of thing. Fully up to the standard of the BBC. Overall, a good film which captured the core of the story.

One lapse in the costume drama side of things was the big hay making scene where one had odd looking, presumably old-style Russian, scythes and lots of the whistling noise made by a scythe well swung. The mowers were mowing in a very heritage bit of countryside with very tasteful summer evening lighting effects. The catch was that the long lines of mowers appeared to be mowing on the spot, rather than working their way forwards. Plus the film gave the impression that the hay was carted home the day it was cut, which it not the usual practise in this country, not unless you are making silage, which the Russians were not.

Prompted to take another look at the book, now on Kindle. Problem 1 was that Kindle does not support flicking through, perhaps looking for a particular bit. It does give a size indicator and you can tell it where to go in terms of that size indicator and then page up and down, but this is not quite the same. There is no detailed contents page which might help you to find the bit you want and there is no cast list when you forget what the relationship between Dolly and Kitty is - if any. All things which would be easier to fix (from an IT point of view) on one of those (more expensive) apple jobs. Problem 2 was that when I plumped down about two thirds of the way through, end of line seemed to have come unstuck. As if the scanning process had, for some reason, dropped end of line markers in at odd places where there should not be one. Perhaps, somehow or other, some of the actual end of lines in the actual book from which my electronic book was scanned have been incorporated, cutting across the Kindle model of simply wrapping the text to fit the screen in the absence of some formatting directive to the contrary.

More important though, reminded what a big & subtle story it is. A lot more story and a lot more nuance than one might have guessed from the film - although if one spoke Russian I dare say more nuance would have made it through.

All of which moved me to ponder over this morning's blackberry jam sandwiches about the way in which the plots of so many of the big novels of this period have been made obsolete by the accessibility of divorce. And also to wonder to what extent the gain of those no longer locked in failed marriages has been offset by the damage done to those brought up in single parent families in consequence. Can Mr. Google tell me how strong an indicator of trouble ahead that is? Stronger than simply being brought up in a poor family?

PS: I have yet to talk to Google about single parents, but Amazon tells me I can have a more modern, 1977, version of Anna K. for getting on for £35. Why is this relatively old film so expensive? Why do the prices vary so much? Is it simply a case of choosing a price which will maximise revenue, irrespective of either costs or marginal costs? Offer, for the present anyway, declined; perhaps the thing will turn up in a late season car booter.