Thursday, December 20, 2012

Should I read The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling?

Yes, you should.
JK Rowling author of Harry Potter series
 I am enjoying the novel right now.  It may not be earth-shattering literature, technically speaking, but it's very competently done.  That's also what I thought about the Harry Potter(s) I read, but I care more about the themes in The Causal Vacancy: harmony, or disharmony, in society.
It is intelligent and heartfelt and like I wrote before, will likely change the world.  This novel enlightens on local governance systems too - not common in the US or in Nigeria, but apparently the practice in the UK. That's another topic that interests me greatly. 

A few weeks ago, I watched again my favourite movie in the whole world: Arven (The Inheritance), a Danish film by Per Fly.  Then I watched the other two films in his trilogy: Baenken (The Bench) and Drabet (Manslaughter).

Arven is about the upper class in their society.  It's stern, with stern colours - or lack of colour I should say.  Saturnine; Capricorn; suits, bare walls, sharp angles, winter.  The rich own winter, I guess. I like everything about this film.
Ulrich Thomsen leads the cast of Arven

Baenken is a film of their lower class.  They live in the projects, sort of like "The Fields" in J.K. Rowling's novel.  Let's just say they didn't try to make this guy go to rehab because he didn't have Amy Winehouse's money.  It's a lovely film.  In terms of matter and language, the poor have so much more stuff, junk, in their sorroundings and in their language.  By contrast, the people in Arven have so much more brutal silence.  
The Bench features alcoholic Jesper Christensen

Drabet is the middle-class film in the trilogy.  There's a professor, there's divorce, there's terrorism...oh, there are ideas.  Bigger than survival is the abstract principle in one's mind.  It strikes me as the film version of JM Coetzee's acclaimed novel: Disgrace.  I like the film better.  Drabet won the Nordic Film Council Prize in 2005, a year before Zozo, the gorgeous immigrant film from the 2006 Arab Film Festival. 

Early next year, I plan to release my poems of the upper class in our low-latitude society.  I know you can't wait ;)