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Kidnapped according to the Beeb
This was the Kidnapped Christmas - my family regards my Kidnapped obsession as marginally more respectable than my love for The Man from UNCLE or Peter Wimsey, so they raised no eyebrows when I ordered myself the Peter Finch and Iain Glenn versions on DVD, although my eldest daughter did ask "Why did you get me this?" when I gave her the graphic novel. I also got Catriona in paperback - I'm older and more patient now than when I first tried to read it, and believe I have a good chance of getting through all of it, instead of just skipping directly to the parts with Alan Breck.
So far, I've watched 2/3 of the version made by the BBC in 2005, starring Iain Glenn as Alan and someone I've never heard of as David.
The good news is that both central performances are excellent. David is just terrific, especially given that he's played by someone so terrifyingly young, and much of the tension comes from his responses to the situations he finds himself in. And, much as I love David McCallum, Iain Glenn comes much closer to the Alan Breck I have inside my head - flamboyant, vain, a self-absorbed show-off, and one scary fucker with a sword. He has the "dancing madness", all right, and if at times he comes a little too close to seeming slightly unhinged, that's clearly the fault of the writers rather than the actor. Because the writers, you see... oh dear. This is where things start to go pear-shaped. They take some liberties with the plot that I don't mind, especially at the beginning. We get to meet David's father while he's still alive, and he gives us some exposition that saves a great deal of time at Shaws later on, so that's all right; and he also looks exactly like his brother Ebenezer - as in "played by the same actor" exactly like his brother - which I suppose is rather Stevensonian. Ransom doesn't get killed by Mr Shuan (who has been cut, his function taken over by a really rather wonderfully evil Mr Riach), or indeed anyone, but then I suspect Ransom's character and fate as described by RLS are really too horrible for a modern audience to stomach easily. And the Covenant doesn't go down on the Torran rocks but is blown up by Alan in an extension of the battle of the roundhouse (which is done really very well; whereas the McCallum version dealt with the shortage of actors by reducing the number of opponents - way to ratchet up the tension, guys - this one does good work with sounds of scurrying and thuds and people getting shot off-camera through the window). As Wolfgang observed, the explosion saved them a lot of money since they didn't have to film the shipwreck, and since all that really matters is that the ship goes down, I guess it's a legitimate change. It certainly made for the most exciting first half of an adaptation that I've seen yet. But then, just as the story ought to have been hitting its stride, with the assassination of the Red Fox and the start of the flight in the heather, it all began to fall apart.
You have to understand that this version was shot in New Zealand. Think about that for a moment. What does it tell you? It tells you that big panoramic backdrops are going to be important. It tells you that the makers had The Lord of the Rings very much on their mind. It tells you that they didn't care if the backdrop actually looks like Scotland. And the reason why they don't care if it looks like Scotland is because this version isn't set in Scotland, at least not in Scotland, the real place, part of Britain, with an actual history. It's set in a fantasy Scotland, an almost empty landscape (Shaws stands alone, miles from anywhere, in utterly uninhabited territory, not unlike a Gormenghast made for one) that is more like the setting for a medieval RPG than an 18th century territory. It appears to take a day of running full-tilt through the mountains to get to Edinburgh from Shaws. We do get a few brief shots of the streets of Edinburgh, but it has a distinctly Ankh-Morporkian feel to it, especially the bar David ends up in, occupied by hard-drinking bounty hunters dressed in black leather, their faces adorned with scars and tattoos and piercings. Hold onto that feeling of unease at the mention of this sinister Long Mile Gang, because it's a premonition, a forewarning of developments to come.
The process of de-historicising Scotland begins with the careful failure to mention that the Minister presiding over David's father's funeral is called Mr Campbell. The reason it isn't mentioned is because no Campbells appear in this film. More shockingly, neither do any Stewarts. Alan doesn't bear a King's name, but then he doesn't need to, because he's so famous in his own right that Hoseasons recognises him as Alan Breck the moment he comes aboard. This is a story about rugged individuals, not people embedded in complex social and political hierarchies. David, in contrast to the well-informed Hoseasons, doesn't even know what a Jacobite is. We are told that the English are doing some terrible things in Scotland - your generic pillaging, slaying and turning out of homesteads - and we are told that some Highlanders are still trying to bring back their King ("some Highlanders" would appear to mean Alan, who at one point, to cringes from the audience, sings the Skye Boat Song) and that others are turncoats who have sided with the English, but it's all kept carefully abstract and ahistorical. Alan, for example is not collecting rents for Ardshiel, but money to fund a military uprising. James of the Glens, who lives in a tiny cod-mediaeval village built of wattle and daub, and appears to rule a household of about 3 people, including (gulp!) his daughter Catriona, is not Ardshiel's steward, but a disillusioned individual who has opted out of the rebellion on the grounds that it's a lost cause. This doesn't have any wider political implications, because he has no wider political influence. When he is taken prisoner by the Long Mile Gang, who have been employed by the Redcoats to catch our fugitives and have somehow managed to get from Edinburgh to Appin in the time it takes David and Alan to get from Lettermore to James's house, even though vast stretches of New Zealand lie between them (at this point I was muttering "Shoot me, quick!"), it is to act as bait to capture Alan, not because significant political players in London and Edinburgh have long wanted James dead.
Then comes the Flight in the Heather. Except, of course, that there isn't any heather, because it's shot in New Zealand, and there also isn't any rain, though there are beautiful shots of snow-capped mountain ranges, and lots of shots of David and Alan running very fast through this beautiful snow-capped landscape - said shots are oddly reminiscent of some other film I saw a few years ago that was also filmed in New Zealand - and then there are some shots of the Long Mile Gang running through the same scenery, but because they are wearing long black leather coats and run in a hunched-and-evil sort of way, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were orcs. They chase Alan and David for a while. Alan deliberately drops one of his silver buttons from a rock, and in the middle of the vasty spaces of New Zealand the Orcs manage to find it, in spite of being so short-sighted that they can't spot his bright blue coat even when they are descending from a higher point on the mountainside (the writers do give David a line asking Alan how he can run so fast in his coat, but they don't seem to have realised that "encumbered with a great coat" refers to an additional overcoat, not his blue French one; and it also doesn't occur to them that leather would be a great deal warmer still to run in). So the Orcs go scurrying off in the wrong direction, and David and Alan head up Mount Doom - er, I mean, head for Cluny's hideout, on top of a bleak and inhospitable snow-capped mountain, because Alan wants to persuade Cluny to start the uprising (told you he was slightly unhinged). I'm not sure why David goes with him, because Alan certainly hasn't done anything yet to teach him to survive in the wilderness, and as there aren't any juries of Campbells to try him, and the Orcs are mainly after Alan, he'd be much better off heading back to Edinburgh. But be that as it may, they head off to meet Cluny, and at this point part 2 ends, and I'm not at all sure if I can face part 3. Though I may watch it simply because I see from the menu that they didn't cut the piping contest, and although this Alan can't sing to save his life, I very much want to see Robin Oig.
So far, I've watched 2/3 of the version made by the BBC in 2005, starring Iain Glenn as Alan and someone I've never heard of as David.
The good news is that both central performances are excellent. David is just terrific, especially given that he's played by someone so terrifyingly young, and much of the tension comes from his responses to the situations he finds himself in. And, much as I love David McCallum, Iain Glenn comes much closer to the Alan Breck I have inside my head - flamboyant, vain, a self-absorbed show-off, and one scary fucker with a sword. He has the "dancing madness", all right, and if at times he comes a little too close to seeming slightly unhinged, that's clearly the fault of the writers rather than the actor. Because the writers, you see... oh dear. This is where things start to go pear-shaped. They take some liberties with the plot that I don't mind, especially at the beginning. We get to meet David's father while he's still alive, and he gives us some exposition that saves a great deal of time at Shaws later on, so that's all right; and he also looks exactly like his brother Ebenezer - as in "played by the same actor" exactly like his brother - which I suppose is rather Stevensonian. Ransom doesn't get killed by Mr Shuan (who has been cut, his function taken over by a really rather wonderfully evil Mr Riach), or indeed anyone, but then I suspect Ransom's character and fate as described by RLS are really too horrible for a modern audience to stomach easily. And the Covenant doesn't go down on the Torran rocks but is blown up by Alan in an extension of the battle of the roundhouse (which is done really very well; whereas the McCallum version dealt with the shortage of actors by reducing the number of opponents - way to ratchet up the tension, guys - this one does good work with sounds of scurrying and thuds and people getting shot off-camera through the window). As Wolfgang observed, the explosion saved them a lot of money since they didn't have to film the shipwreck, and since all that really matters is that the ship goes down, I guess it's a legitimate change. It certainly made for the most exciting first half of an adaptation that I've seen yet. But then, just as the story ought to have been hitting its stride, with the assassination of the Red Fox and the start of the flight in the heather, it all began to fall apart.
You have to understand that this version was shot in New Zealand. Think about that for a moment. What does it tell you? It tells you that big panoramic backdrops are going to be important. It tells you that the makers had The Lord of the Rings very much on their mind. It tells you that they didn't care if the backdrop actually looks like Scotland. And the reason why they don't care if it looks like Scotland is because this version isn't set in Scotland, at least not in Scotland, the real place, part of Britain, with an actual history. It's set in a fantasy Scotland, an almost empty landscape (Shaws stands alone, miles from anywhere, in utterly uninhabited territory, not unlike a Gormenghast made for one) that is more like the setting for a medieval RPG than an 18th century territory. It appears to take a day of running full-tilt through the mountains to get to Edinburgh from Shaws. We do get a few brief shots of the streets of Edinburgh, but it has a distinctly Ankh-Morporkian feel to it, especially the bar David ends up in, occupied by hard-drinking bounty hunters dressed in black leather, their faces adorned with scars and tattoos and piercings. Hold onto that feeling of unease at the mention of this sinister Long Mile Gang, because it's a premonition, a forewarning of developments to come.
The process of de-historicising Scotland begins with the careful failure to mention that the Minister presiding over David's father's funeral is called Mr Campbell. The reason it isn't mentioned is because no Campbells appear in this film. More shockingly, neither do any Stewarts. Alan doesn't bear a King's name, but then he doesn't need to, because he's so famous in his own right that Hoseasons recognises him as Alan Breck the moment he comes aboard. This is a story about rugged individuals, not people embedded in complex social and political hierarchies. David, in contrast to the well-informed Hoseasons, doesn't even know what a Jacobite is. We are told that the English are doing some terrible things in Scotland - your generic pillaging, slaying and turning out of homesteads - and we are told that some Highlanders are still trying to bring back their King ("some Highlanders" would appear to mean Alan, who at one point, to cringes from the audience, sings the Skye Boat Song) and that others are turncoats who have sided with the English, but it's all kept carefully abstract and ahistorical. Alan, for example is not collecting rents for Ardshiel, but money to fund a military uprising. James of the Glens, who lives in a tiny cod-mediaeval village built of wattle and daub, and appears to rule a household of about 3 people, including (gulp!) his daughter Catriona, is not Ardshiel's steward, but a disillusioned individual who has opted out of the rebellion on the grounds that it's a lost cause. This doesn't have any wider political implications, because he has no wider political influence. When he is taken prisoner by the Long Mile Gang, who have been employed by the Redcoats to catch our fugitives and have somehow managed to get from Edinburgh to Appin in the time it takes David and Alan to get from Lettermore to James's house, even though vast stretches of New Zealand lie between them (at this point I was muttering "Shoot me, quick!"), it is to act as bait to capture Alan, not because significant political players in London and Edinburgh have long wanted James dead.
Then comes the Flight in the Heather. Except, of course, that there isn't any heather, because it's shot in New Zealand, and there also isn't any rain, though there are beautiful shots of snow-capped mountain ranges, and lots of shots of David and Alan running very fast through this beautiful snow-capped landscape - said shots are oddly reminiscent of some other film I saw a few years ago that was also filmed in New Zealand - and then there are some shots of the Long Mile Gang running through the same scenery, but because they are wearing long black leather coats and run in a hunched-and-evil sort of way, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were orcs. They chase Alan and David for a while. Alan deliberately drops one of his silver buttons from a rock, and in the middle of the vasty spaces of New Zealand the Orcs manage to find it, in spite of being so short-sighted that they can't spot his bright blue coat even when they are descending from a higher point on the mountainside (the writers do give David a line asking Alan how he can run so fast in his coat, but they don't seem to have realised that "encumbered with a great coat" refers to an additional overcoat, not his blue French one; and it also doesn't occur to them that leather would be a great deal warmer still to run in). So the Orcs go scurrying off in the wrong direction, and David and Alan head up Mount Doom - er, I mean, head for Cluny's hideout, on top of a bleak and inhospitable snow-capped mountain, because Alan wants to persuade Cluny to start the uprising (told you he was slightly unhinged). I'm not sure why David goes with him, because Alan certainly hasn't done anything yet to teach him to survive in the wilderness, and as there aren't any juries of Campbells to try him, and the Orcs are mainly after Alan, he'd be much better off heading back to Edinburgh. But be that as it may, they head off to meet Cluny, and at this point part 2 ends, and I'm not at all sure if I can face part 3. Though I may watch it simply because I see from the menu that they didn't cut the piping contest, and although this Alan can't sing to save his life, I very much want to see Robin Oig.