Any Human Heart - Boyd adaptation

[swanriver]

I'm missing Downton
This is so tricksy in comparison. All that strange camera work.
And everything is from Logan's point of view.

And so depressing that you know he is going to get old and nostalgic. Don't like the way that everything has already happened ifysim.
But I suppose it is quite good

And I like his furrowed face and the green light of the interiors...And the textures. That all makes Downton look a bit vulgar in its scene setting tbh.

I was really looking forward to this but was disappointed. Just seemed to be about him shagging an endless stream of girls. Did not actually like the Logan character, didn't seem like a nice person to me.

I found it dull to start with. But persevered and acutally enjoyed it. I do agree with all that you have listed already though about knowing he grows into an old man, and the whole women dropping their knick nacks just like that.

good cast though.

I also don't like logan character. Specially the affair - oh poor you married someone and now don't feel like living up to the commitment you have made.

Oh the guy playing Ian Fleming-what have I seen him in?

As a baddy-period drama?

He's the chap out of Rome and was the assasinated (sp?) Home secretary in spooks, very lovely!

I don't think we're meant to like him are we?

actually the more I think about it the more annoyed I am that it is meant to be about human experience but actually it is about elite male experience.

unless the title is ironic it should be called 'Any Male Human Heart'.

Ah, my favourite book? Little thing called Any White Male Comfortably-Off Philandering Oxford-Educated Straight Human Heart.

diddl, the Ian Fleming guy was also baddy William Elliott (the cousin who was only after the estate and title) in Persuasion 2007.

D

That was it Delia, thank you.

Personally found it deeply boring and switched off after half an hour. Life is too short.

Was also disappointed as the book is fantastic. Hope it gets better next week.

dh came in after about an hour and asked ' are you really enjoying this' . Actually not one little bit, and wished I'd cut my losses earlier and turned over to Andrew Marr and JFK!

So boring. Hate egotistical camera work. Hated one dimensional women in it. The trailer looked good so disappointed.

Did anyone watch again last night?

I didn´t-and don´t feel as if I missed anything tbh.

Watched a repeat of Sherlock, instead.

I am loving it. I haven't read the book but I could really feel his pain last week when he returned after the war and discovered his wife and child had been killed in the blitz. It's perfect Sunday night viewing.

By the way, were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as obnoxiousl as portrayed?

I wondered that as well Swanandduck.

Apparently she was domineering and wasn't deferential to the Duke just because he was a royal, but he liked that as he wrote years before he abdicated, at age 25, that he hated his royal duties.

Have also given up.

Only continued watching because Sam Claflin and Matthew Macfayden were in it.

Its odd...Matthew Macfayden, hayley attwell and sam claflin were also all in "pillars of the earth"

Jim Broadbent was in character last night as Logan from the age of 70. He was superb, playing his part of Logan in the style of Matthew McFayden, even mimicking his expression and the way he walks.

Logan is a flawed, sometimes shallow man, stumbling into marriages and stupidly shagging his dead son's girlfriend (who was only 16) so can appreciate seth saying this is highly subjective from an elite male point of view.

He lost all his money, ended up living in his flat in London (up to the 1970s). Everybody he loved died: children, friends and his much-loved second wife. An ex-lover Gloria played brilliantly imo by Kim Cattrall turns up and is dying she blows all her money and he looks after her.

Logan copes with all this by ruminating on how we have good luck/bad luck, always moving forward and is stoical about the loss of wealth.

I will have to read the book, I am intrigued after reading Q & A with William Boyd that all sorts of people from a girl of 16 to an old man who thinks he is Logan have told him it is highly relevant to them, even though it's a story told very subjectively from a character one can't always be sympathetic to.

I am liking it more as it progresses; I think it becomes increasingly clear that Logan is flawed and I think the writer is aware of the irony; I don't think he is blithely privilegedly unaware of the any human heart/any elite white male heart thing.
The 16 year old who he thinks is 19 wandering round his flat with no clothes on until he simply can't do anything other than shag her is not the writer saying 'oh poor innocent man seduced by jailbait', it's Logan's self-justifying version of his own appalling behaviour.

did you see the trailer for next week? Logan is hit by a van, ends up in hospital then has another adventure somewhere.

I wonder if the message is how any human heart could survive such loss, I am just not sure at the moment. Logan had tried suicide but carried on.

it was so sad when he was lying on the roof with his stepdaughter and she asked if he was happy.

yes....

I cried last night watching this.

Loved the character of Gloria, really lived life to the full.

He called his stepdaughter Stella, his dead daughter's name, and he disasterously married again while still grieving for Freya.