strange and random happenstance

The Man in the High Castle was at one time my favorite series out there. The perfect expansion of the book by Philip K. Dick into a true visual masterpiece. I'm not sure where it fell apart though, but aside from a stellar The Twilight Zone parody this season with Stephen Root as Hawthorne Abendsen, AKA the actual Man in the High Castle, this show felt completely disconnected from previous seasons and laboring on some fantastical notion that the death of John Smith would fix everything. My brother would argue that the production team was so convinced of a season five pickup they were busy plotting towards an epic conclusion that they didn't see the writing on the wall and instead we are left with what we are left with. Yet I don't buy into this theory because even if we were to get more I didn't want that more anymore, if you get my drift. My main problem was that the relationship between Julia Crain and Tagomi was the heart and soul of this show and to not have Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa on AT ALL this season made no sense. To add insult to injury they kill him off in a ham-handed scene with a body double. Tagomi didn't deserve this fate and neither did we! Also where was Ed? Can someone, anyone answer that question? Also don't even get me started on deciding to finally, and belatedly, add more African American characters with the Black Communist Rebellion and not being able to find a balance between the old and the new characters. So in other words, just watch the sensational first three seasons and know that season four is unwatchable. Sometimes it just frustrates me how a show can just destroy itself by losing it's vision.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Hawthorne Abendsen, John Smith, Julia Crain, Philip K. Dick, Rufus Sewell, Stephen Root, Tagomi, The Man in the High Castle, The Twilight Zone

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Published by: Library of America
Publication Date: 1962
Format: Hardcover, 900 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

The Allied Troops failed. The Axis powers won and divided up the spoils. Nazi Germany claimed the eastern United States while Imperial Japan created the Pacific States of America from the western coast and the Rocky Mountain States became a neutral buffer zone. It has been fifteen years since the end of the war. Fifteen years living under new laws, adapting to new cultures. Fifteen years of trying to forget the freedom Americans once had. But everyone has handled the situation in a way unique to themselves. Robert Childan has flourished under Japanese domination. His shop, American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. deals with objects from America's past that the Japanese just love for their historicity. He has learned his trade well and understands the respect and protocol his clients demand. From Nobusuke Tagomi, a high ranking Japanese trade official dealing with a visiting Swedish industrialist, to the Kasouras, a young couple in love with Americana, Childan will go beyond what is necessary to please his customers. But soon his confidence in his life and his store will change forever when an item he has is accused of being a forgery.

Of course it is a forgery, there is no way that there are enough Colt .44s from the "wild west" to supply the demand for them, but Childan doesn't know he's just collateral damage from two disgruntled employees who work for his supplier, the Wyndam-Matson Corporation, trying to go out on their own making jewelry instead of forgeries. One of these two men is Frank Frink, a man desperately hoping no one ever finds out he's Jewish and daydreaming that his wife, Juliana, will return to him. But Juliana is in the Rocky Mountain States where she's gotten involved with a man, Joe, who's obsessed with a book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, written by Hawthorne Abendsen, The Man in the High Castle. Abendsen never forgot his freedom and his book is about an Allied victory in WWII. A past and present that could have been. As powers are at play trying to once again change history and divide alliances with the Germans wanting sole control of the world, one woman will learn the truth and perhaps it will set everyone free.

Back when I was more of a film buff than book geek I was very much aware of the controversy surrounding Blade Runner and which release of the film was the true vision of Ridley Scott, similar to the issues surrounding Terry Gilliam's Brazil which lead to me buying a cheap VHS transfer for the directors cut at a Doctor Who convention. This desire for truth lead me to seek out and read the source material, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. My introduction to his terse almost choppy writing style is forgotten in the fogs of time, or in this case a really long train trip to New York, but I still remember my film TA's awe that I bothered to go to the source. This has always kind of shocked me, an adaptation doesn't exist in a bubble and the original source material, be it book or play, is always worth reading. When The Library of America came out with a "four volumes of the 1960s" omnibus deluxe edition containing Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I jumped at the chance to upgrade my tatty paperback movie tie-in. It wasn't until Rufus Sewell signed onto the adaptation of The Man in the High Castle that I noticed that it was one of the four books in this volume I'd bought.

From that moment I knew I needed to read this book and yet, as so often happens, time was against me but once again my blog's theme months came to the rescue. I would read The Man in the High Castle this November no matter what! As it turned out this book is tailor made for me. I have a love of historical fiction but I also have a love of Steampunk. And think about this, what is Steampunk but a more typical alt history in that it leans towards the fantastical? This book combines all this into a wonderful mashup that occasionally has some over-the-top science fiction elements. But being the type of author Philip K. Dick was I think we can forgive him Nazis colonizing Mars, all the ensuing space race jargon, and those super rockets that get you from Germany to San Francisco in a matter of minutes not hours because he uses them so sparingly. In fact his using these fantastical elements so sparingly makes them have a greater impact than if it was all about aliens. Because the truth is this book isn't heavy on the plot, it isn't about great world changing events, it's about a select few people and how they deal with the world around them and learning their truth. And a search for the truth is how I first found Philip K. Dick in a wonderful sense of synchronicity. The Man in the High Castle is a character study and I loved that.

The lead characters are Robert Childan, Nobusuke Tagomi, Frank Frink, and Juliana Frink, and none of them are fully sympathetic, which makes them human and therefore far more interesting. Childan is grasping and obsessed with his status, think of an Arnold Rimmer not in outer space but dealing antiques in an alternate San Francisco. Tagomi is I think the most fascinating, someone who the readers would see as an enemy, but is drawn so complexly, who is so multifaceted, that he instantly becomes the hero of the book. He's constantly being pushed outside his comfort zone, forced to face situations he could never have envisioned, and yet he rises admirably to all challenges. Childan and Tagomi represent the more Japanese side of the Axis powers, and what I connected to was this glimpse into a culture that is so dependant on status and behavior. This book gets you into another mindset, makes you question how you see the world around you. I couldn't help noticing parallels to Michael Crichton's Rising Sun and how that book also gave us this tantalizing acress. For me Frank was almost a non-character, because he was really just there to connect Juliana to the rest of the narrative. And while Philip K. Dick obviously suffers a bit from the objectification of women who are in thrall to men that was not only prevalent but expected at the time, the turn around at the very end put this trope in it's place.

One thing that runs through this character driven book as a unifying force is the voice of the oracle through the I Ching. While the characters constant reliance on this device of cleromancy might in clumsy hands have conceivably bogged down the narration, Philip K. Dick handles it in such a deft and skilled way that it becomes a character of it's own. He either really knows his stuff or is really good at making it look that way. This device is also where the biggest most thought-provoking elements of The Man in the High Castle arise. The idea that the oracle has access to alternate dimensions that can be achieved through higher thought and belief, that truth can be divined? Shivers up my spine. The scene where Tagomi is trying to come to grips with all that he has suffered and done over the course of the book as he sits on that park bench looking deep into a broach designed by Frank and reaches awareness because the Wu of the piece moved him and for an instant he comes into our world, not the alternate world he has always lived in, it's like the book transcended. In that moment The Man in the High Castle was no longer a character study, but a religious experience connecting all of the universes. This book became MORE than a book. It became an experience to never forget.     

An experience that relies heavily on Philip K. Dick being meta before meta was really a thing. The book that drives Juliana and much discussion about what-ifs and could-have-beens in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. A book that shows the Axis powers losing and the world becoming very much like the one we live in. Just think on that. From our POV we're reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII while the characters in that book are reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII that is similar to how our world actually is. So much fun is derived not in seeing the horror the world could have been in had the Allies lost, but in seeing how Abendsen wrote this other world. The subtle changes that still led to the same result. So much of this book is chaos theory in action. The world is a house of cards, change one thing, change so many things. Because the Allied Forces lost not because of anything that happened during the war but because of the assassination of FDR prior to the war. Change one thing change everything. And yet, somehow, the oracle sees the truth at the heart of it all. Perhaps the changes within Abendsen's book to our truth are inaccuracies on his part. As to why he would have inaccuracies in a book he'd written? Well, you'll just have to read this one to find out.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alternate History, Blade Runner, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, I Ching, Japan, Library of America, Michael Crichton, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Rising Sun, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, The Man in the High Castle, WWII

The Man in the High Castle Season 2
Based on the book by Philip K. Dick
Starring: Alexa Davalos, Conor Leslie, Tate Donovan, Valerie Mahaffey, Macall Gordon, Daniel Roebuck, Rufus Sewell, Chelah Horsdal, Quinn Lord, Gracyn Shinyei, Genea Charpentier, Emily Holmes, Jessie Fraser, Gillian Barber, Aaron Blakely, Ray Proscia, Luke Kleintank, Sebastian Roché, Wolf Muser, Kenneth Tigar, Bella Heathcote, Gabrielle Rose, Joel de la Fuente, Lee Shorten, Tzi Ma, Alex Zahara, Hiro Kanagawa, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Brennan Brown, DJ Qualls, Rupert Evans, Cara Mitsuko, Callum Keith Rennie, Rick Worthy, Michael Hogan, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Arnold Chun, Yukari Komatsu, Eddie Shin, and Stephen Root
Release Date: December 16th, 2016
Rating: ★★★★★
To Watch

Juliana Crain's actions have gotten her into trouble. Handing over the film to Joe, a known Nazi, has sparked the ire of the resistance and has led to her being brought before The Man in the High Castle himself. He won't answer her many question, including whether she appears in the countless films he has surrounding him, he only wants her to answer one question, did she recognize one specific man in the film she gave to Joe? She knows she's seen him before but not who he is. Now certain members of the resistance want her dead but little do they know she has remembered the man, he was a comrade of her father's and, as it turns out, her sister Trudy's real father. But George Dixon lives in New York, deep in the heart of the Reich. Knowing she isn't safe in San Francisco Juliana defects to the Nazis. The resistance had the wrong idea about why she gave Joe the film, so why not see if the Nazis will draw the same erroneous conclusion and let her infiltrate their ranks? All she planned on doing was finding George and getting some answers, but he's in the resistance as well and with Juliana being sponsored by Obergruppenführer John Smith she is placed to help like never before and wash the slate clean for the film debacle. Though giving the resistance information on people she's come to know, even if they're Nazis, is harder than she would have thought. Whereas back in San Francisco Frank is good with doing whatever the resistance wants, even blowing up the Kenpeitai headquarters if it comes to that.

Also in New York Joe's actions haven't gotten him in trouble at all. In fact he's being lauded for his work and has been called to Berlin to finally meet his father, Reichsminister Martin Heusmann. Joe learns that his entire life has been a lie. He was bred by the Nazis to be a part of their master race. A master race that is ready to finally take full control of the world and eliminate their allies, the Japanese. Yet from what The Man in the High Castle has seen, if all the pieces line up just right another world war can be averted. This all hinges on Trade Minister Tagomi. Tagomi has found a way out of this world. He has found his way into a world where the Axis powers lost and where is wife and son still live. In this world he also has a daughter-in-law, Juliana. The woman who was once in his employ in his world is here his daughter. But there is a distance with this family he longed to find again. He slowly starts to bridge the gap. Why would he want to return to his world when everything he could ever want is here? His son and Juliana belong to a group that hopes to "Ban the Bomb." The group watches video footage of what an H-bomb can do. Tagomi is shocked by the destruction, his world only has A-Bombs, which are actually used to detonate H-bombs. They are so much more deadly, so much more powerful, but the video just happens to have been shot in what is Japanese territory in his world. If Tagomi could take this film back there he could scare the Germans into believing that the Japanese could destroy them, therefore the delicate balance of world peace would be restored. Only Tagomi could lose his own chance at happiness in saving his world. 

I have spent a little over a week binging The Man in the High Castle's first two seasons and I am not exaggerating when I say I could literally go back to the first episode right now and start all over again. What's interesting about season two is that now that they are running out of narrative from the book they are expanding the universe but then linking it back to the original story when you least expect it. Small, throwaway lines have become fully developed into catalysts for world changing events. While in the book Hitler's death is important, it's almost part of the background noise. It's happening, but it was inevitable. Here, because we actually have characters embedded in the Reich we see the power struggle, we see the plays for control, we get a richer experience. Because so much of season two is taking the characters we loved and scattering them to the four corners of the earth and watching them interact with different characters we never thought they'd meet. This gulf between them makes them all have to survive more on their own but at the same time it makes you feel disconnected. They aren't all trying to get back to each other, they're just trying to survive and make it in the world they've created for themselves so sometimes, just for a second or two, you think, perhaps the series has lost it's way. Yet by the end I realized I should have never doubted anything. The Man in the High Castle was using his knowledge, threading the needle of possibilities to get the best outcome for his world, and that meant the strongest ending you could imagine with each and every character playing their part in order for that end to be achieved. Go team!

Of course for that ending to be possible some characters have fallen by the side of the road and some have just fallen. Frank for example. Frank has fallen. In the first season he was a sympathetic character. He'd just lost his sister and her two kids because of his heritage and his belief in Juliana. His attempt to assassinate the Prince of Japan was a reckless moment that he grew to strongly regret. But seeing his brains blown out in a possible future in one of the films bound for The Man in the High Castle unhinges him. It's like he knows his death is coming so instead of being just grief-stricken he becomes careless. He is reckless with his own life and out of nowhere he becomes an asshole. While I should be marveling in the fact that Rupert Evans is such a good actor that he can make me hate him so much after feeling so sorry for him instead I just want to punch him in the face. I mean it, I seriously NEED to punch him in the face. He's become a dick and he needs to die. Even his best friend Ed, who will literally take anything from anyone calls him out on it. That's how low you've fallen Frank! And yet without Frank I wouldn't get some of my favorite scenes in season two. In order to get Ed released from prison Frank formed an alliance with Robert Childan and the Yakuza to make forgeries of American antiques. This is a bit of a twist on the arrangement in the book where Ed and Frank make jewelry that Childan then sells in his shop. But it's the expansion of the friendship between Ed and Childan that is at the heart of the show. They're both underdogs who don't trust each other but realize they can use each other. In fact, can we just give these two an "Odd Couple" like spin-off right now set in the neutral zone?

Whereas on the other coast Juliana is living this weird Nazi filtered Leave it to Beaver life. In fact, does anyone else remember that horrible John Travolta movie The Experts about Russians trying to become Americans? I feel like it's a weird parallel world like that, they're trying so hard but something is just off. These ARE Americans, and yet they're Nazis! In a flashback we see Obergruppenführer John Smith on his way to Washington when the bomb went off. He WAS an American. He WAS in the army. And yet he's been totally indoctrinated. The insight into the American Reich is something entirely new that this adaptation did which the book never explored. While getting to see it last season through Joe we saw it at a distance. He was technically an insider and therefore the world didn't shock him. But for Juliana, well it is a foreign country. While her world is also foreign to us, the things she points out, the protection she gives the ailing Thomas, these are things we can relate to and therefore her eyes become our eyes. In fact when she tells Dixon that she feels sorry for them I totally agree. They might be people with different beliefs, some of them sick and demented calling for the killing of the ill, but they are still people. They still live and love and are worthy of our sympathy. And that's how you know if you're a good person, if you can find the good in anyone. If, on the other hand you just see people below you? Well, then you're a Nazi in your heart of hearts and are not a good person. 

Though the person who once again makes all the incredibly talented cast look like amateurs is Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Tagomi. Everyone has seen him in something, from Big Trouble in Little China to Rising Sun to Mortal Komat to basically every TV show ever, he's always played larger than life characters like Edie Sakamura memorably belting out "Don't Fence Me In." Yet here his performance is subtle, nuanced, and he's finally getting the props he deserves for being such an amazing actor. He is the heart, he is the lifeblood of The Man in the High Castle, and he is perfection. It's not that his foresight saves his world and makes him a hero, it's the little moments that bring it all together. Watching his wife through the window as the blossoms fall from the tree. Carefully fixing a cup that was destroyed and resulted in a fissure developing between himself and his family. The subtle expressions of how he sees this new and strange world he has become a part of and trying to rectify his knowledge with this new knowledge. The joy of holding his grandchild for the first time. Plus finding out that the connection between him and Juliana, that protectiveness he felt in this world is the love for a daughter, it's heartbreaking. Each and every little moment adds up to an Emmy worthy role. But then, to have him turn his back on this happiness, turn away to save his world when he could just live here, that shows the worth of the man. He can't be happy if those he cares for are in danger. Seriously, is someone going to give him an Emmy and me something to wipe away my tears?

An interesting fact about this show is that despite being set in the 60s in San Francisco there has been little to no mention about the drug culture, which Philip K. Dick did somewhat include by the legal and copious use of marijuana in his book. But in season two this all changes! Not only do the marijuana cigarettes, Land O' Smiles, make an appearance, there's far more drug use and "free love." The importance of finally including the counter culture and the peaceful protests is that it gives the viewers something they can more directly relate to. It's more a history we know, with the Berkley protests, but what's more it's a history we're currently living through. What I found extremely interesting though are that those most embracing the love and drugs are the children of those in command in the Reich, the Lebensborn, the genetically engineered superior race of which Joe belongs. They're all about sex without boundaries and drug experimentation. It's like we've gone back in time to the Weimar Republic which Christopher Isherwood wrote about and became immortalized in Cabaret. One starts to wonder, as Joe's new lady friend Nicole says, if perhaps things would be different if the new, younger generation were in charge? Do the youth of Germany hold the same beliefs as their parents? We've seen in Obergruppenführer John Smith's son a certain Hitler Youth fanaticism, but what about those put into power? Joe quickly becomes his father's right hand man and doesn't hold the same beliefs... one wonders, with the death of Hitler, if enough time were to pass would the Nazis just go away? A thought for another season, which I wish was available right now!   

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1960s, A-Bomb, Adaptation, Cabaret, Christopher Isherwood, Counter Culture, Drugs, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, H-Bomb, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Rising Sun, San Francisco, Tagomi, The Man in the High Castle, WWII

The Man in the High Castle Season 1
Based on the book by Philip K. Dick
Starring: Alexa Davalos, Conor Leslie, Macall Gordon, Daniel Roebuck, Rupert Evans, DJ Qualls, Michael Gaston, Christine Chatelain, Callum Seagram Airlie, Carmen Mikkelsen, Darren Dolynski, Brennan Brown, Joel de la Fuente, Lee Shorten, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Arnold Chun, Carsten Norgaard, Hiro Kanagawa, Mayumi Yoshida, Daisuke Tsuji, Amy Okuda, Luke Kleintank, Rufus Sewell, Chelah Horsdal, Quinn Lord, Gracyn Shinyei, Genea Charpentier, Ray Proscia, Wolf Muser, Rick Worthy, and Camille Sullivan
Release Date: November 20th, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★
To Watch

Juliana Crain's sister has gotten herself into trouble and it will change the whole course of Juliana's life. She sees Trudy shot by the Kenpeitai in the street. Reeling from this shock she stumbles home and notices that she's holding a film reel that Trudy handed her. She can't believe what the film shows. A world where the Allied forces won WWII. A world where San Francisco isn't occupied by the Japanese and the Reich doesn't control the East Coast. When her boyfriend Frank comes home he urges Juliana to go to the police. Tell the Kenpeitai everything to clear her name of treason. Instead Juliana decides to deliver the film to the neutral zone in Trudy's place. She leaves for Canon City Colorado and doesn't look back. In her absence Frank is implicated in Trudy's crimes. The fact that his grandfather was Jewish means that he and his family have no standing. Before the misunderstanding is cleared up Frank will lose those closest to him all while covering for the woman he loves, a woman who is currently at sea. She has no idea who her contact is or who she is supposed to give the film to. There's a young man from New York, Joe, who she's not sure if she can trust. Yet his help saves her life and she learns that he too is part of the resistance. He too knows of the films and that they are to be delivered to "The Man in the High Castle."

Only Joe isn't really a member of the resistance. He has infiltrated the resistance on the orders of his leader, Obergruppenführer John Smith. Joe is a Nazis. Only his mission in Canon City didn't go to plan because of the arrival of Juliana Crain. Therefore he needs to prove his loyalty to the Reich. Seeing as Juliana Crain went home to San Francisco, it makes sense that Joe will follow her there, uncover all her contacts and discover the new film that has appeared. Only Julia has changed drastically since her experiences. She doesn't want to make all the deaths of those she loved be in vain and she has taken a job as a hostess for the Trade Minister of the Pacific States, Nobusuke Tagomi. Little does she know that this man whom the resistance views as the enemy might have very similar goals to her. He's been working with a high ranking Nazi to undermine the Reich to give Japan parity to Germany. Because another World War is looming. One where there can be only one victor. The films showing a different world might just hold the key to the truth of what is really going on, but will it all be in vain? Is war inevitable?

The difference between a good adaptation and a bad adaptation is that at the end you can't believe it was ten hours long. As you gobbled the episodes up they just flew by. Whereas a bad adaptation, it feels like work to watch each excruciating episode and ten hours can feel like a lifetime. Yes, I'm looking at you The Handmaid's Tale! The Man in the High Castle was the exact opposite in almost every way to that atrocious Atwood adaptation. Constantly compelling, faithful when needed, expansive when called on, always building on the writing of Philip K. Dick while making sure to create a show that was bingeworthy. But that's what happens when your show is created by someone who had astronomical success with The X-Files, AKA Frank Spotnitz, versus someone who's more known for kitschy Canadian shows, though I will say here to Bruce Miller, LOVE Men in Trees! Also The X-Files had a sustained look and feel, and that really can't be said for any of Bruce Miller's many shows. The noir feel that imbues ever scene of The Man in the High Castle is just perfect. While there is spycraft I'd liken it more to the Cold War than WWII which makes sense being set in 1962. But it's just such a fully visualized representation of this alternate world that it's staggering how complete it is from the advertising to the clothing. I just want more and more and more of it!

What I found interesting in translating this book to the screen is that the Japanese are depicted far more bleakly perhaps even verging on evil. The book is so concerned with the Nazi threat, as was Philip K. Dick himself, that comparatively the Japanese are depicted benignly. His personal bias came through in his writing. Therefore I don't know if this was some way to level the playing field and show that both surviving Axis powers were equally evil or to just create more strife in the lives of our protagonists who predominately live under Japanese rule. Because a clearer statement of the evil of the Japanese couldn't be made than having the Kenpeitai accidentally kill Frank's sister and her two children. Nothing that horrific happens in the book, that's for sure. But it serves a purpose in that it makes Frank invested in the resistance. Juliana's sister's death and Frank's sister's death unite them in their desire to overthrow the world they have come to accept. But what's more by showing the Japanese as evil and then going further into their characters, learning more about Tagomi, seeing how the head of the Kenpeitai bristles under what he has to do, all this gives us a deeper, layered, nuanced show, where the villains aren't necessarily so because of their acts but because they have been forced into these roles over time.

Though what this adaptation did superbly was expand Philip K. Dick's world so that we weren't just seeing the American and Japanese side of things but it also ensconsced us firmly within the Reich and in particular the Reich in America. Yes, this is literally going to be all about the importance of Rufus Sewell. I should say Rufus Sewell as Obergruppenführer John Smith, but seriously, wherever Rufus goes I follow. Season two of Victoria just wasn't the same without him in every single episode. Oh Lord M, you're breaking my heart. THIS is the genius of casting Rufus! Most people have some sort of connection to him as an actor, I mean he's seriously amazing. By casting him as a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi you know he's the bad guy and you aren't rooting for him, because seriously, you NEVER root for Nazis, instead you are drawn into the mindset of the Reich. You get a glimpse into how calculating and cruel their world is where old friends can become enemies that you are to interrogate over a family dinner and your own child's life hangs in the balance because of a hereditary illness. You see the Nazis in all their evil and you understand that evil. To understand your enemy is the first step in destroying them.

One major change that makes total sense in the shift of mediums is that instead of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy being a book within the book it's a series of films that look like newsreels that where shown in cinemas during and right after WWII. In the book it made sense for this alternate outcome of WWII to be disseminated as a book, but for a TV show it makes sense for it to be a film. Like to like in the different media. Because think how boring it would be watching people read long sections out of the book on screen? It's been proven that people have only about a 15-20 minute attention span when being read to, so firstly, everyone would have tuned out, and secondly? Snoozeville. Whereas think how much information can be gleaned in a short film and watching the characters reactions to that film? What's more it's far more visceral for the viewers to see images, many of which the are familiar with. The films, for the most part, show the world that we are familiar with. What's more in the book The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is being read by everyone everywhere in the Japanese territories, whereas having films that have to be secreted around the country, films that even Hitler wants to watch? This just adds to the noir spycraft of the series.

Yet one thing that hasn't been explained yet, though it might in season two, is where the films come from and why The Man in the High Castle wants them. Obviously they are interesting, even Hitler is obsessed with them, but there's a bigger secret here. In the book The Man in the High Castle is the one disseminating the information, yet in this adaptation he's collecting it. Why!?! One theory I have is that perhaps he's collecting the films to eventually write the book in order to achieve the outcome in the book, which is informing the masses through the publication of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. But then where are the films coming from? Are they slipping through rips in time and space like Tagomi in that cliffhanger seeing him in OUR 1962 San Francisco? Are they actually showing the truth and that everyone is under some kind of mass hypnosis? I have other theories but I don't want to start spoiling everything. Whatever the reason for this reversal it has kept me guessing and to take a book that I've read and loved and make it new and fresh? Well that's truly amazing in my mind. I literally can not wait to start season two (right now!) but I'm also worried that once I binge it what will happen to me while I wait for season three? Seriously, what will happen!?! 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Alternate History, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, Japan, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Rufus Sewell, San Francisco, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, The Handmaid's Tale, The Man in the High Castle, The X-Files, WWII

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Published by: Library of America
Publication Date: 1962
Format: Hardcover, 900 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

The Allied Troops failed. The Axis powers won and divided up the spoils. Nazi Germany claimed the eastern United States while Imperial Japan created the Pacific States of America from the western coast and the Rocky Mountain States became a neutral buffer zone. It has been fifteen years since the end of the war. Fifteen years living under new laws, adapting to new cultures. Fifteen years of trying to forget the freedom Americans once had. But everyone has handled the situation in a way unique to themselves. Robert Childan has flourished under Japanese domination. His shop, American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. deals with objects from America's past that the Japanese just love for their historicity. He has learned his trade well and understands the respect and protocol his clients demand. From Nobusuke Tagomi, a high ranking Japanese trade official dealing with a visiting Swedish industrialist, to the Kasouras, a young couple in love with Americana, Childan will go beyond what is necessary to please his customers. But soon his confidence in his life and his store will change forever when an item he has is accused of being a forgery.

Of course it is a forgery, there is no way that there are enough Colt .44s from the "wild west" to supply the demand for them, but Childan doesn't know he's just collateral damage from two disgruntled employees who work for his supplier, the Wyndam-Matson Corporation, trying to go out on their own making jewelry instead of forgeries. One of these two men is Frank Frink, a man desperately hoping no one ever finds out he's Jewish and daydreaming that his wife, Juliana, will return to him. But Juliana is in the Rocky Mountain States where she's gotten involved with a man, Joe, who's obsessed with a book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, written by Hawthorne Abendsen, The Man in the High Castle. Abendsen never forgot his freedom and his book is about an Allied victory in WWII. A past and present that could have been. As powers are at play trying to once again change history and divide alliances with the Germans wanting sole control of the world, one woman will learn the truth and perhaps it will set everyone free.

Back when I was more of a film buff than book geek I was very much aware of the controversy surrounding Blade Runner and which release of the film was the true vision of Ridley Scott, similar to the issues surrounding Terry Gilliam's Brazil which lead to me buying a cheap VHS transfer for the directors cut at a Doctor Who convention. This desire for truth lead me to seek out and read the source material, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. My introduction to his terse almost choppy writing style is forgotten in the fogs of time, or in this case a really long train trip to New York, but I still remember my film TA's awe that I bothered to go to the source. This has always kind of shocked me, an adaptation doesn't exist in a bubble and the original source material, be it book or play, is always worth reading. When The Library of America came out with a "four volumes of the 1960s" omnibus deluxe edition containing Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I jumped at the chance to upgrade my tatty paperback movie tie-in. It wasn't until Rufus Sewell signed onto the adaptation of The Man in the High Castle that I noticed that it was one of the four books in this volume I'd bought.

From that moment I knew I needed to read this book and yet, as so often happens, time was against me but once again my blog's theme months came to the rescue. I would read The Man in the High Castle this November no matter what! As it turned out this book is tailor made for me. I have a love of historical fiction but I also have a love of Steampunk. And think about this, what is Steampunk but a more typical alt history in that it leans towards the fantastical? This book combines all this into a wonderful mashup that occasionally has some over-the-top science fiction elements. But being the type of author Philip K. Dick was I think we can forgive him Nazis colonizing Mars, all the ensuing space race jargon, and those super rockets that get you from Germany to San Francisco in a matter of minutes not hours because he uses them so sparingly. In fact his using these fantastical elements so sparingly makes them have a greater impact than if it was all about aliens. Because the truth is this book isn't heavy on the plot, it isn't about great world changing events, it's about a select few people and how they deal with the world around them and learning their truth. And a search for the truth is how I first found Philip K. Dick in a wonderful sense of synchronicity. The Man in the High Castle is a character study and I loved that.

The lead characters are Robert Childan, Nobusuke Tagomi, Frank Frink, and Juliana Frink, and none of them are fully sympathetic, which makes them human and therefore far more interesting. Childan is grasping and obsessed with his status, think of an Arnold Rimmer not in outer space but dealing antiques in an alternate San Francisco. Tagomi is I think the most fascinating, someone who the readers would see as an enemy, but is drawn so complexly, who is so multifaceted, that he instantly becomes the hero of the book. He's constantly being pushed outside his comfort zone, forced to face situations he could never have envisioned, and yet he rises admirably to all challenges. Childan and Tagomi represent the more Japanese side of the Axis powers, and what I connected to was this glimpse into a culture that is so dependant on status and behavior. This book gets you into another mindset, makes you question how you see the world around you. I couldn't help noticing parallels to Michael Crichton's Rising Sun and how that book also gave us this tantalizing acress. For me Frank was almost a non-character, because he was really just there to connect Juliana to the rest of the narrative. And while Philip K. Dick obviously suffers a bit from the objectification of women who are in thrall to men that was not only prevalent but expected at the time, the turn around at the very end put this trope in it's place.

One thing that runs through this character driven book as a unifying force is the voice of the oracle through the I Ching. While the characters constant reliance on this device of cleromancy might in clumsy hands have conceivably bogged down the narration, Philip K. Dick handles it in such a deft and skilled way that it becomes a character of it's own. He either really knows his stuff or is really good at making it look that way. This device is also where the biggest most thought-provoking elements of The Man in the High Castle arise. The idea that the oracle has access to alternate dimensions that can be achieved through higher thought and belief, that truth can be divined? Shivers up my spine. The scene where Tagomi is trying to come to grips with all that he has suffered and done over the course of the book as he sits on that park bench looking deep into a broach designed by Frank and reaches awareness because the Wu of the piece moved him and for an instant he comes into our world, not the alternate world he has always lived in, it's like the book transcended. In that moment The Man in the High Castle was no longer a character study, but a religious experience connecting all of the universes. This book became MORE than a book. It became an experience to never forget.     

An experience that relies heavily on Philip K. Dick being meta before meta was really a thing. The book that drives Juliana and much discussion about what-ifs and could-have-beens in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. A book that shows the Axis powers losing and the world becoming very much like the one we live in. Just think on that. From our POV we're reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII while the characters in that book are reading a book about an alternate outcome to WWII that is similar to how our world actually is. So much fun is derived not in seeing the horror the world could have been in had the Allies lost, but in seeing how Abendsen wrote this other world. The subtle changes that still led to the same result. So much of this book is chaos theory in action. The world is a house of cards, change one thing, change so many things. Because the Allied Forces lost not because of anything that happened during the war but because of the assassination of FDR prior to the war. Change one thing change everything. And yet, somehow, the oracle sees the truth at the heart of it all. Perhaps the changes within Abendsen's book to our truth are inaccuracies on his part. As to why he would have inaccuracies in a book he'd written? Well, you'll just have to read this one to find out.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alternate History, Blade Runner, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, I Ching, Japan, Library of America, Michael Crichton, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Rising Sun, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, The Man in the High Castle, WWII

If you're like me you're looking around the world and just thinking WTF. I mean, there's a reason The Handmaid's Tale won all the awards at the Emmys and it's not that it was a fabulous series. There was a reflection of the current state of civil liberties just going out the window. More and more it looks like we have become the backstory of a dystopian tale. So you'd think that reading other dystopian books would be antithesis to what we need at the moment, but you'd be wrong. There's something comforting in seeing that these visionary authors saw it coming. Also, there's that ray of hope that perhaps, if we pull together we can stop it before it's gone too far. We can stop it before Handmaids exist or before The Circle closes or just stop the Nazis, because seriously people, Nazis are never good and at least in this world we defeated them once before. These books give us insight into ourselves and the world around us and have become more and more relevant. Therefore I hope you'll spend some time with me reading a few dystopian classics and seeing what Hollywood made of them. It's time for some dystopian drama.   

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Civil Liberties, Dave Eggers, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, Emmy, Handmaids, High Rise, J.G. Ballard, Margaret Atwood, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Prophetic, The Circle, The Handmaid's Tale, The Man in the High Castle