Still-Life with Eyeliner

Review of "My Boy Jack" on Masterpiece Theatre. 

I just watched "My Boy Jack" on PBS and, to my surprise, found it quite moving. It was beautifully done. It's difficult to depict stories of soldiers without evoking political debates, but this version humanized the personal conflicts and struggles that they must have endured without excessively bringing in the political. What an interesting story, even the more so for its basis in real life events.

It puts Rudyard Kipling in a new light, for me, makes me feel compassion for him as a person. I read quite a lot of his work when I was young and enjoyed it. In college, I usually saw him depicted as jingoistic, too much devoted to the British Empire, romanticizing and objectifying Indian people for the sake of stories. But, encountering this story of his life in this context, human and fallible and in love with story and romance and playfulness, makes me want to reread his works. I wonder whether he was conflicted in his own self-identity.

Daniel Radcliffe did an amazing job as an actor. I thought that all I would see was Harry Potter pretending to be Jack Kipling, but he was so believable as Jack. David Haig was remarkable as Rudyard Kipling.

Here's the text of Kipling's poem, recited at the end of the film (as available on pbs.org). I'm particularly drawn to its insistence through repetition, which reminds me of the first part of Lorca's "Lament for the Death of Ignacio Sanchez Mejias". It's haunting and ghostly and so much like the process of coming to terms with grief.

My Boy Jack
by Rudyard Kipling (1916)

'Have you news of my boy Jack?'
Not this tide.
'When d'you think that he'll come back?'
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

'Has any one else had word of him?'
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

'Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?'
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

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