The best of 2017
Not going to lie, I’ve mostly written this so I can reassure myself I did something this year other than wait for the election, cover the election, then laugh about the election result. These are in no particular order, not all of them are new, and I’ve definitely forgotten stuff.
Best books
Strangers In Their Own Land, Arlie Russell Hochschild. (Reviewed here.) This is the book I recommend to people when they ask about trying to understand Trumpism. Its premise is that good people can support the Tea Party end of American politics, and those of us from the opposite side need to scale the “empathy wall” to understand why. Hochschild visits a polluted landscape in Louisiana to ask why people who need a strong government don’t want one. The vignettes are stunning: the couple living on the edge of a toxic bayeau, the man in the last house on his street not claimed by a drilling-induced sinkhole, and the workers whose job strips the enamel from their teeth.
Selfie, Will Storr. A madly vast concept to take on, but Will Storr has produced an engaging book about western ideas of the self, and how they mirror the prevailing culture of the time, from the hippy let-it-all-hang-outness of the Sixties to the capitalist individualism of the Eighties. I reviewed it here.
A Life of Contrasts: An Autobiography, Diana Mosley. Mitford Sisters don’t complain, don’t explain and don’t do self-doubt. Where else would you find a page dedicated to complaining that Hitler is often portrayed as a great eater of cream cakes, but that the author never once saw him consume one?
How Not To Be A Boy, Robert Webb. Partisan choice, given that this started as a piece for the New Statesman, but it’s kind, funny, moving and thoughtful.
Killers of The Flower Moon, David Grann. Given there’s so much noise out there, I love it when you find a writer you just trust completely to tell a story. Grann is one of those writers: his New Yorker pieces are always fascinating (subjects include a murder in the Sherlock Holmes society, a man who convinces families he’s their long-lost child, and the search for a monster squid). This is a quieter tale about a historical series of deaths in a Native American community which got unexpectedly rich when oil was found on the (supposedly barren) land given them by the government in exchange for having their territory nicked off them. Truly chilling. (Additional note: I had no idea Grann has an eye disease until he talked about it on a Longform Podcast. As someone with troublesome eyes, I find this incredibly inspirational.)
The Mother of All Questions, Rebecca Solnit. (I interviewed her here.) The follow-up to Men Explain Things to Me includes an extremely timely reflection on sexual harassment.
The Odyssey, Homer (trans. Emily Wilson). I’d never read this before in translation, never mind the original Greek, so I was curious to see whether the story was compelling enough to explain its enduring influence. It’s certainly weirder than I expected, and the translation doesn’t shy away from the fact this society is completely alien, to the extent that its characters’ motivations can now seem utterly inexplicable. This NYT profile of Wilson sets out the background.
My 2018 To Do List: George Saunders’s Lincoln In The Bardo, Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust, Ariel Levy’s The Rules Do Not Apply, Claire Tomalin’s A Life of My Own.
Best theatre
Ink (Almeida/West End). Saw this three times, which is objectively nuts, thanks to writing a profile of its author James Graham. So much to love: the way the super soaraway fun of the first half curdles into something demented, as the journalists search for MORE FUN! MORE NEWS! MORE MORE MORE! The set, by Bunny Christie, a scrappy tower of crappy desks and old-fashioned filing cabinets. The understated central performance by Richard Coyle as Larry Lamb, a man making a Faustian bargain: his soul for more sales than the Mirror. The song and dance bits. One of those plays which makes you think: I’ll watch anything you do. (It’s on until January 6.)
Hamilton (Victoria Palace Theatre). Blah blah blah rewriting the story of America. Blah blah blah Cabinet rap battles. Blah blah blah marry me, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hamilton has been so universally praised that I’m sure every British person feels the temptation to hate it, just on principle, but unfortunately it really is as good as everyone says. Here are 3,500 words from me on why. (On in the West End until The End of Time Itself.)
Everyone’s Talking About Jamie (Sheffield/West End). I saw this in Sheffield for Saturday Review, in a matinee audience full of pensioners, which was exactly the right way to experience a big-hearted musical about a boy who wants to be a drag queen. (Currently on in the West End.)
Hamlet (Almeida/West End). I am not the natural audience for Hamlet, due to my intense hatred of whiny, introspective men who blame their mothers for all their problems. Luckily, Andrew Scott played Hamlet with volcanic rage held just below the surface, rather than Kevin The Teenager Does Elsinore; and the other characters — particularly Gertrude and Ophelia — felt more fully realised than I’ve ever seen before. Hildegard Bechtler’s smoked-glass set was a thing of true beauty, and the heavenly-dance-party final scene was just a lot better conceived than usual, where Fortinbras often has to delicately pick his way through a dense carpet of people desperately fighting to stop their chests going up and down when they’re supposed to be dead. It’s on BBC2 in the New Year.
Beginning (National Theatre/West End). A bittersweet, naturalistic story (told in real time) of two people meeting at the end of a house party. The set featured the exact kitchen cabinets I had in the flat I shared in the mid-2000s, the soundtrack was all songs I had danced to at 2am in my 20s, and there was even a joke about arguing with Owen Jones on Twitter. I don’t know where these playwrights get their ideas from, I really don’t. (You can see it in the West End in January.)
Queen Anne (RSC, West End transfer). I wasn’t a massive fan of the script here, but I was a massive fan of the two central performances (Romola Garai was literally breathtaking in her rose gown, that quintessential 18th century colour). Also, I got to explain the Stuart succession to a group of tourists in the queue of the ladies’ loos, which made my night, perhaps even my year. Finally, reading all those Jean Plaidy books paid off! (Review here.)
Gutted I Missed: Barber Shop Chronicles (Inua Ellams, National Theatre), a meditation on blackness and masculinity, set inside barber shops around the world; Anatomy of A Suicide (Alice Birch, Royal Court). Alice Birch is a playwright who really interests me, so I would also like the fact I missed Ophelias Zimmer to be taken into consideration.
Everyone Loved Except Me: The Ferryman. I felt like somewhere inside this production was a brilliant play, but I think it lost me at the Irish dancing. Or the riff on Of Mice and Men. Or when it suddenly went full Tarantino out of nowhere. But as the juggernaut rolls on, and the fifteenth stunt goose retires for a life upstate, and definitely not Jez Butterworth’s Christmas roast, I have to concede I’m in the minority.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
I went on a podcast this year which was . . . banterous. I am not banterous. I have now learned my lesson.
A Supposedly Not-Fun Thing I Will, In Fact, Do Again
Opera. Had never been, couldn’t really see myself going. Just this huge body of work about which I have no critical knowledge, with intimidating barriers to entry. Then I thought: get over yourself. So I booked a random ticket up in the Amphitheatre of the Royal Opera House for Katie Mitchell’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor, on the basis that NS podcast supremo Caroline Crampton and elfin-haired superstar novelist Sarah Perry both raved about it. Also, I hate it that people feel they shouldn’t experience cultural stuff because they don’t have the right “tools” to do so. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, bloody hell opera singers are impressive, and I will definitely go again sometime.
Best TV
The Handmaid’s Tale, Channel 4. Beautifully lit and shot, and with a pitch-perfect performance from Elisabeth Moss as Offred. Margaret Atwood’s novel manages not only to spook you about the future, but remind you how whacko lots of things we take for granted now are (like changing your name on marriage). This adaptation does the same, updating the book’s allusions to Christian fundamentalism to take in Islamism too, for example in the horrifyingly quiet scene where a lesbian is slowly hung from a crane.
Big Little Lies, er, iTunes? Hugo Rifkind pointed out that this series, starring Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, would not pass a reverse Bechdel Test: it had no interest in its male characters’ interior lives, and saw them purely as vectors for female relationships. To which I say: true. And it’s great! Give us this one, guys. After all, you had, like, Entourage. And Baby Driver. (On which, more later.)
Catastrophe, Channel 4. Just very funny, very dirty and very raw.
Mindhunter, Netflix. No idea why I liked this so much, given its glacial character development, innumerable conversations while smoking on a plane and the sight of two men having to wait patiently while a serial killer masturbated into a stiletto. First, it has that beautiful, sinuous David Fincher photographic style; second, although it’s about serial killers, we only meet them AFTER they’ve committed their crimes, unlike most cop shows. Third, it builds to a character payoff which is dark and uncomfortable in a way that you rarely see on television.
Everyone I Know Loved But Wasn’t For Me: The Good Place: too bubblegum. Twin Peaks: The Return: too WTF. G.L.O.W.: Wrestling? No.
Best Film
The Death of Stalin. So much to love here: Stalin with an Alan Sugar accent, Jason Isaacs playing Sean Bean’s Sharpe playing a mutinous General, Armando Iannucci’s deft control of the contrasts of light and shade in the story. It’s very funny. It’s very horrible. Those two tones don’t fight with each other. There are a million ways this film could have failed, and it avoids all of them.
Get Out. Hipster that I am, I prefer the alternate, more grim ending. And I have some quibbles about a film which is such a stereotype-buster using the hoary trope of the madonna/bitch. But. BUT. Talking of funny and horrible, this film is both. The repetition from the murderous white family about how they “would have voted for Obama a third time, if I could” elegantly mirrors the structural racism participated in by liberals even as they mouth pious platitudes. I’m not surprised this film struck such a chord this year.
I Am Not Your Negro. James Baldwin’s prose has a rhythm and energy all of its own, which this documentary captured. He is the author of one of my favourite quotations on the creative process, too: “Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”
Logan. Although I enjoyed Taika Waititi’s take on Thor (and I loved his New Zealand-based Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which I saw this year on Netflix, and his earlier vampire mockumentary, What We Do In The Shadows), Logan was easily the year’s best superhero film. Think of it as X-Men Does King Lear. (Review here.)
Mild Disappointments: Blade Runner 2049: looked beautiful, had some interesting reflections on reproduction, but meandered too much. T2: Trainspotting: amazing scene with the PINs, but not enough to warrant reviving it. Moonlight: its dreamy, woozy visuals were a revelation, and the central performances were all stellar, but I wanted more from the third act. La La Land: I came out of the cinema quite liking it, and then progressively remembered more and more men who have bored on about their hobbies to me, retrospectively poisoning it. Now I just have to hear the words “David Foster Wallace” and I think of this Ryan Gosling face and how he explains jazz to a jazz musician:
I’m with Morgan Leigh Davies: “It is impossible to imagine one of [Damien] Chazelle’s men in a subordinate position to a woman’s creative expression: while Mia spends multiple scenes throughout the film listening to Sebastian play, he never sees her act. He doesn’t even go to her play. But his final message to her sums up the entire film in a single beautiful sequence that the film has not earned.”
In the Birdman Memorial Bin With You: Baby Driver. Look, Edgar Wright, I’m very impressed that you can loop a Steadicam round Ansel Thingy in a graceful ballet with an eclectic pop soundtrack, but come back when the female roles on offer have more development than “woman who is hot for Jon Hamm”, “woman who is hot for Ansel Thingy” and “woman who is dead”.
Gutted I Missed: A Quiet Passion (Emily Dickinson biopic? JENNIFER EHLE??), Lady Macbeth (screenplay by Alice Birch, see above).
Best video games
Sorry, no. Has any medium got so dull so quickly? Anyway, here’s Keith Stuart’s list.
Best Music
I could claim I have listened to anything other than the Cabaret soundtrack and the Best of the Divine Comedy 8,000 times, but it would be a lie. (PS: The best Sally Bowles is Jane Horrocks. Fight me.)
Best Music Video
Obviously.
Happy end of 2017, everybody!
