Tag: Weirdness

Man’s Search for Happiness

Man’s Search For Happiness (1964). 13 min., sound, color. USA: Brigham Young University Motion Picture Studio, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

They don’t make them like this anymore. I came across this when I was a Mormon missionary, circa 2000.  It was dubbed onto an old VHS I found in a ward meetinghouse library in Reynoldsburg, OH.  I’ve never been able to find it again, but I recently was reminded of this movie and thought to check for it on online, and found it in seconds.  Weird to realize that in 2000 there was no such thing as finding or streaming a video online; now you can find almost anything.

The church remade this movie in the 80s and I think they still distribute that version, but it fails to match the weirdness and mystery that you will see here.  I love the surrealist/proto-psychedelic moments. To a 21st century father, the scenes of the birth and the babies in the hospital feel almost dystopic, but I guess that’s just how they did things back in the 1950s and 1960s in America.  There’s many other priceless moments, such as the awkwardness and bad acting of the old moustached guy as he is welcomed into the afterlife by his various kindred dead.

Plus, as weird as it all is, I think it’s also true.  I sometimes have a desire to be both ironic and sincere at the same time.  At no time is that feeling more relevant than as I watch this film.

The Kneebone Boy

Book Review

Three siblings: Otto, Lucia, and Max; the story is told by one of them, but the teller has been sworn not to reveal him or herself by the other siblings.  They live with their dad in a small town in England where they were long ago labeled the weird kids of the town, but only because their mother mysteriously vanished and/or died before they were old enough to really remember her, and the super-tall and oldest brother Otto never speaks and always wears a scarf.  The nasty theory is that he strangled his own mother with the scarf in a rage of madness, and their father covered it up to protect his son.

With The Kneebone Boy, American author Ellen Potter lets loose her anglophilia and successfully hijacks the magic of the long and storied history of British children’s literature, from Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis to Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling, that she clearly loves so much; except there is no magic in The Kneebone Boy.  Our unidentified narrator makes this ever so clear from the outset, lest we end up disappointed.

Oddities?  Does the rumored existence of a boy born with bat ears and fur all over his body and locked in the top chamber of a crumbling old castle sound normal to you?

Mysteries? If a missing mom and a furry boy locked in a castle aren’t enough mysteries for you, then you are a tougher reader than me.

Adventures? Would getting in a fight with a tattooed thug while stranded in the streets of London parentless count?  How about exploring the treacherous secret passageways of the aforementioned crumbling castle, perched on a cliff overlooking the sea?

With all that, who needs magic?

Told by one of the cleverest narrative voices I’ve read in a long time and abounding with the weirdness, mystery, and plot twists of the children’s books I grew up loving, this is the first book I’ve read in a while that made me genuinely excited about children’s literature written primarily for children.  For that, and even though and maybe actually partly because of the fact that this book probably won’t win any awards, it was my favorite book of 2010.

The Kneebone Boy
Written by Ellen Potter
Feiwel & Friends
288 p.
ISBN: 9780312377724
Release Date: September 14, 2010