“Brave Love” – Literature retold

From director John Calder:
My mentor asks "what's the genre?" I say "this is highly original alternative cinema that is beyond genre". The mentor says "don't talk rubbish, what's the genre?". I come up with "classic literature retold as a near-future science-fiction mock epic" or "mock epic" for short.’

How does Katherine Mansfield give us that?
Start with “mock” as in celebrating Katherine Mansfield the satirist.

Flashback to 2011

John Calder creates independent alternative films-by leading an “indie” co-operative.
These have been shorts developing a style of satirical mock epic filmed in one room with a green screen.
We have “been there done that” with shorts and we are ambitious to take on creating a “feature”.

Influence: BBC Shakespeare Retold (2005)

Why should Shakespeare get all this attention? We are in New Zealand. Katherine Mansfield is our Shakespeare of the South. Let’s do a retelling of Katherine Mansfield!
Not a completely new idea because in 1981, John Calder attempted to film the Katherine Mansfield story "Brave Love" retold in the then present day. That was an unfinished project partly because the Super-8mm film tech we used was not good for lip-sync drama. It gives us some good example scenes and a head start on how to adapt the story. In 2011 we have a big improvement in accessible tech. "Brave Love" becomes possible.

A difference:
“Shakespeare Retold” retained little or nothing of Shakespeare’s dialogue.
John Calder was determined to feature Katherine’s dialogue and wording.

Adaptation challenge!

NZ Director Fiona Samuel says it well:
Most of the stories defied adaptation for the screen – they deliberately lack conventional narratives and action of the plot-making variety; those things were of no interest to Katherine Mansfield. Much as I love the unique mix of vulgarity and delicacy in the stories, and their vivid sense of the life packed into every moment, I couldn’t find one to make into a drama. But her life was a treasure trove – stories everywhere I looked.

Fiona Samuel’s response was to create the television mini-series “Bliss” which she describes as the true story of Katherine Mansfield’s escape from New Zealand, and the fast and furious beginning of her life as a writer.

We had a different journey. Katherine wrote "Brave Love" in 1915. It was lost then found in 1972. 2012 was its first time published in a Katherine story collection as an equal with the other stories. Gerri Kimber and Vincent O'Sullivan, editors of that "Edinburgh Edition" describe "Brave Love" as "cinematic". John Calder thinks "Brave Love" is Katherine's parody of the "penny dreadful" romantic pop fiction of her time. It is only a small step to parody the modern rom-com.

Here now is the "literati trailer".
Note the "literati colour coding" of the sub-titles:
yellow italics –   Katherine Mansfield original text or with minimal editing
blue-green italics – rewording, based on Katherine Mansfield text
white standard – new material

“Brave Love” not long enough? Add “The Garden Party”.

Consider Laura Sheridan, 12, in “The Garden Party”, a thinking and questioning child of a rich family, who has a breaking-out-of-her-bubble experience.
We substitute Valerie Brandon, 32, from "Brave Love", a cynical, disillusioned oil company trainee executive in an unhealthy relationship with her billionaire boss - who has a breaking-out-of-her-bubble experience.

The garden party becomes a corporate event, with a planning meeting in a boardroom.

To follow Katherine Mansfield’s prime directive “Cry Against Corruption”, we needed research on how to satirise boardroom meetings. We found the 2012 research of Judith Baxter, as reported in the Financial Times by Lucy Kellaway.

“She found that more than three-quarters of women’s jokes tended to be met by stony silence, while men’s were greeted with great hilarity…
The single fastest way of understanding the balance of power and alliances in any group is by looking at who is laughing – and not laughing – at whose jokes."
(Kellaway, 2012)

Your mission, dear interactive reader, is to spot that power game in this video.

Who’s Evershed?

Meet William Evershed, the billionaire boss of Laputa Oil. Katherine wrote him as a banker but we change his occupation to Oil Company CEO as part of making "Brave Love" a Global Warming movie.

In “Brave Love”, Mansfield hints at the backstory of Valerie and Evershed, leaving it to the reader’s imagination. We imagine this:

The Problem of Hans

KM got a popularity boost at the time of World War 1 by mocking Germans in her early “German Pension” stories. "Brave Love", also an early story has a moment of German mocking. Meet Hans the long-suffering German waiter:

"Madame," said the German waiter appearing from nowhere with a thick bandage round his neck.

"What is the matter now?" said Mildred in a disgusted voice. "More boils again, Hans. Ugh! How dreadful you look."

"Ah, Madame, please to excuse," mumbled the German waiter.

"No I won't excuse you Hans. I'm sure it's because you don't wash."

She scolded him in a hard angry voice that Valerie and Mitka heard all the way up the stairs.

We have been seeing the adaptation of classic works to follow contemporary sensibilities. First it was Dr Suess, then Roald Dahl. Do we now do the unthinkable and censor Katherine Mansfield? Fortunately, Katherine herself gives us some guidance from later in life. This from a 1920 letter to John Middleton Murry

Bogey I cannot have the German Pension republished under any circumstances. It is far too immature & I don’t even acknowledge it today; I mean I don’t ‘hold’ by it. I can’t go foisting that kind of stuff on the public – it’s not good enough  … It’s positively juvenile and besides that it’s not what I mean: it’s a lie.

We think that a reason for republication was to cash in on the post war unpopularity of Germans. We also take for further guidance, evidence of Katherine’s sympathy for the Germans in their treatment by the victorious allies.

A letter, Sunday, October 27, 1918 - To the Hon. Dorothy Brett.

Really, in spite of all England shrieking and imploring everybody not to make Peace until they've had a rare kick at him and a rare nose-in-the-mud rubbing one does feel that Peace is in the Air.
“It is all about, my sister, Yet it is unborn”

A letter, Saturday, May 1, 1922 - to the Hon. Dorothy Brett

Manoukhin's partner here, a very exceptional Frenchman, started the subject yesterday, said, Why did not we English immediately join the French and take all vestige of power from Germany? This so disgusted me I turned to Manhoukhin and felt sure he would agree that it simply could not be done.

Meet Hans

We have kept what we see as the main storytelling purpose which is to build Millie's' assertive and strong personality. We need to adapt Hans to fit in to a contemporary corporate workplace. We believe we are true to Katherine’s later attitudes in removing the ugly German moment and turning Hans around. Hans the mocked ugly waiter becomes Hans the honest company accountant mocked by his dodgy colleagues.

We set out to make a Climate Change and Income Inequality satirical film. We needed quality writing. There is surprisingly little coming from contemporary writers on these contemporary themes. Who do we turn to? That great relevant contemporary writer – Katherine Mansfield.

This article is based on:
“Brave Love” – A contemporary adaptation to film
by John Calder and Gerri Kimber, presented by Gerri Kimber at the Katherine Mansfield Society Conference,
“Katherine Mansfield: Life, Light, and Renewal”
Pavillon de l’Erable, 70 Rue du Vieux Ru, Avon, Fontainebleau, France. Friday 13 Oct 2023, 4:30-5:00pm

References

Wikipedia (2023). ShakespearRe-Told. [Article]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShakespeaRe-Told

Kellaway, L. (November 25, 2012). Heard the one about women at the office? [Financial Times article]
Retrieved March 04, 2021 from:

(audio) https://www.ft.com/content/b2146e5e-eb9d-4978-a601-8920a021144e

(text) https://web.archive.org/web/20121128052902/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bbe38088-34a3-11e2-8b86-00144feabdc0.html