Tag Archives: Family

Movie Night: Swiss Family Robinson

Welcome to Movie Night: a chance to sit back, relax, and take in a new piece of cinematic wonder with Little Satis and I. This will (hopefully) be a once-weekly post about the movies we watch together, snuggled up in the dark with a cup of tea and a pack of M&Ms. Enjoy!

 

Year: 1960

Production Company: Walt Disney

Leads: John Mills, Dorothy McGuire

Little stands out in my memory from my childhood as well as Disney’s 1960 version of Swiss Family Robinson. Along with such swashbuckling epics such as Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, its simple yet delightful tale of a (Swiss) family shipwrecked on a deserted island mesmerized me, and I lived and breathed the storms, the jungles, the fear and the smoke of the pirates’ attack. What young boy didn’t want to live in a treehouse with a monkey and an elephant?

This was something of a spectacle when it was released almost fifty-two years ago. A rare feat for Disney, it was filmed in epic widescreen, which allowed the luscious scenery of Trinidad and Tobago to sprawl across the screen. The opening scene, serving as a striking backdrop for the credits, shows a nineteenth-centry sailing vessel being battered to pieces in a savage storm. I marvel at this scene today; long before the age of terrible CGI sea storms, this looks, even now, stunningly realistic. The waves seem too large and detailed to be a miniature set, yet they clearly couldn’t have filmed it in an actual storm. My best bet is they made phenomenal use of the historic sets of Pinewood Studios.

Accompanying this dramatic opening is William Alwyn‘s beautiful, romantic-inspired score – strings, piccolos, timpani and haunting brass a musical match to the storm that could rival Wagner. Throughout the film, this score keeps pace, and though it occasionally descends into cartoonish cues, it provides a depth and drama to an otherwise amusing family adventure.

There are, of course, numerous instances that date the film, most notably the almost embarrassingly stereotyping of both women and races. There are only two females in the film – Mother Robinson and Roberta – and both are portrayed throughout as helpless and defenseless. I held a little hope when Roberta shows some skill at shooting, but she never ends up actually shooting any pirates – another terrible typecast. I’m pretty sure the oriental-ish pirates weren’t actually speaking any kind of language at all. Oh, for the sixties.

And of course, looking back on it now, how did I miss that the ‘Swiss’ family were all English and American? And why on earth did no one ever grow a beard? And for that matter, how did they build all that cool stuff? It’s sort of like someone had a sonic screwdriver to hand.

Either way, it’s a charming and lighthearted romp of an adventure, and Little Satis and I very much enjoyed it.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

For Seven Days, I Turned Off the Internet…And the World Didn’t End

Last week I got to do something very cool, and it was something I’ve never done before. I turned off the internet.

I suppose I can’t really claim that the entirety of the internet went down entirely, although if it had I wouldn’t have noticed, because I experienced a week of digital abstinence. The worst part is, I meant to.

Wow. What an admission that is. Imagine choosing not to receive emails, or text messages, or RSS feeds, or (horror!) WordPress hits. Imagine that, if you wanted to write something down, you had to use an archaic instrument known as a pen. Imagine not knowing whether you had new Facebook friends!

Such a world I lived in for an entire week. To give a bit of context, for most of the time between 12:00 PM one Saturday and 2:00 PM the following Saturday, I was in the middle of the ocean somewhere between Port Canaveral and Nassau in the Bahamas. I didn’t get wet, though, because I was on a boat. The boat was big, and in the end we had to share it with a few other people as well, but the captain was from Sweden and so I didn’t really mind.

I suppose I can’t actually claim to have shunned all technology entirely; I did bring a digital camera with me, as well as my iPhone (just for recording video, I swear). Between them, I captured 1,200 photos and two hours of video. I don’t want to look at them, because if I do I won’t ever stop. These pixellated memories are so numerous because my plethora of iDevices weren’t dinging and pinging and swishing every few minutes with something I decided was really important to know about. I didn’t receive an email. I didn’t get a text. I didn’t read a tweet, or update a feed. In fact, I ended up with such an awful lot of time on my hands that I had to look at the ocean sometimes, which was nice because there were quite a few sunsets to be had.

Another thing I had time for was thinking. After all, when you don’t have Wikipedia, you have to come up with your own answers to things. An astronaut told us that the body’s immune system doesn’t work in space, and gosh – we had to dig deep into our own poor wisdom to try to figure out why. My wife and I felt like scientists, trying to answer a question no one knows the answer to.

Above all, I was inevitably forced to spend time with my family. Man alive, the distraction of the internet is certainly a blessing for those who want nothing to do with their loved ones! I’ve been trying to keep a few chapters ahead of where my son and I are in the Redemption of Erâth, just in case one week I don’t write something, but I used them all up because he really, really wanted to know what happened next. At the end of chapter 12, I had to tell him that there actually wasn’t any more yet, and he nearly beat me. As for my wife, I had to share a jacuzzi with her, be sympathetic when she got seasick, eat a dozen chocolate-covered strawberries with her, sing karaoke with her, kiss her, and simply just be with her for seven days straight. Can you imagine?

At first, I was very worried. What was happening at home? What if someone at work really need to get in touch with me, even though I’m not really in charge of anything at all? What if my mom called? What if someone read my blog? What if a groundhog made a nest under the house? What if something really, really unimportant happened somewhere in the world? I wouldn’t be able to answer calls, say thank you to blog likes, take goofy pictures or read all about it on my iPad. I felt lost. But then, an odd thing began to happen. I slowly came to the following realization:

None of it matters.

Nope. Not one bit. Not one single thing in the imaginable universe was more important than spending seven entirely uninterrupted days with my wife and son in the Caribbean. Because you know what? I could always find out when I got back. And if I missed something in the meantime? Well, if it was something so ephemeral it only lasted a week, it probably wasn’t important enough to know about in the first place. If my schedule changed, I’d find out when I got back. If scientists discovered life on Mars, I’d find out when I got back. Hell, if my mother died, I’d find out when I got back.

In the end, of course, I got back. I came back to 101 emails, 91 tweets, 8 Facebook notifications, 66 RSS updates, 3 voice mails and 30 app updates. And you know what?

None of it really mattered.

I feel really happy right now. I don’t think I can live without connection in my working, every day life, but never again will I go on a holiday without turning off, leaving behind or utterly disabling my many devices. It is beyond worth it.