“I will show you the true shape of your desire.”
When watching films and TV of the past, certain things seem alien nowadays. Such as cameras steadying on old men eating spinach and letting it dribble down their chin, people smoking at the dinner table, and main characters seeking adultery without apology. I wouldn’t say the filmmakers didn’t care about what they put on screen, no. But they were not as worried about making offenses, and if the offense was made, well, that was your tough luck you were offended; turn the damn thing off!
Such was the brilliance of THE GREEN MAN (1990) starring the incomparable Albert Finney; a three hour miniseries. No apologies the way these characters are. They are like real people, and they didn’t need to be psychoanalyzed by Oprah to know the things they do or did, were bad, or good. Just good old fashioned complicated people - like real life.
The film starts with a mysterious woman trekking through English woods when she is attacked and killed by the trees and greenery (a gruesome bit showing a vine running through her midsection).
Maurice (Played by Finney---Miller’s Crossing, Tom Jones, Wolfen, and Skyfall) is a successful alcoholic and a womanizer that runs the hotel the green man, with the help of his wife, Joyce (Played by Linda Marlowe---Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Hellraiser: Deader). The green man is known for its hauntings and no one in the family takes seriously, it’s just stories for business reasons. While walking down the stairs to join friends and family, talking to guests, he sees that mysterious woman slink by and then disappear. On the night of his birthday, his father passes away at dinner. Before he dies, Maurice’s father hears and sees something that others at the table do not. The old man promptly falls face-first in his plate, dying from a cerebral hemorrhage. Maurice begins to drink more than usual, begins an affair with a Doctor-friend’s wife, Dianna (Played by Sarah Berger---Scarlet Pimpernel, Lovejoy), who prescribes him all kinds of pills. Maurice has a run in on the stairs with a woman in a long gown. No one saw this woman that nearly knocked Maurice down the stairs. Maurice’s son and his girlfriend join the family for the funeral. Even Maurice’s lecherous lingering kisses on son’s girlfriend isn’t toned down just because his father had just died.
While taking care of snotty guests, Maurice sees the ghost of the notorious Dr. Underhill. So famed because the good doctor was accused of killing his wife, who was torn to bits. It was never proven Underhill ever committed this crime, he moved into the green man and died there. No churchyard would take his body, and no clergy would perform his last rites. Dr. Underhill was buried on the green man’s grounds. When Maurice sees his ghost, he runs away screaming through the dining room full of his guests.
After much calming down by his family, Maurice sits in the dining room alone, late at night, and calls Dr. Underhill. Dr. Underhill materializes. Maurice is able to communicate with him and Dr. Underhill mutters: “I will show you the true shape of your desires.” Maurice goes to Cambridge to study Dr. Underhill and discovers a diary of the 1700’s figure. In it, he reads about Underhill’s exploits, strange unscientific experiments and the fact Underhill was a womanizer just like him. Meanwhile, he asks his mistress Dianna to join him and Joyce in a threesome, along with helping uncover some buried treasure in Underhill’s grave. The mistress heartily agrees to both in a discussion that also includes a confession of how much she hate’s Maurice’s friend----her husband, Jack.
While lounging and drinking in the bath, Maurice is attacked by a ghostly bat. Again, Maurice is prescribed more pills, because seeing a bat is definitely a sign of some sort of stress from his father’s death and too much drink. Hours later, he and Dianna dig up Underhill’s grave, and find the good doctor’s skeletal remains. The ghost of Underhill watches from a church window just as Maurice’s wife rests uneasy in her bed. They find the corpse clutching a tin box, and Maurice removes it without much of a fight from the corpse. Maurice and Dianna bury him back and try to tidy the grave as if it had never been disturbed. They open the box to discover a tiny silver statue inside that may or may not be a pagan charm. There is talk of the threesome and carrying on after the funeral of Maurice’s father, Dianna wants to make love on the grave. But she becomes terrified when she notices something in the woods is watching them.
While booking a room at the Green Man for his romp with Joyce and Dianna, strange things happen to the computer, and a cryptic message appears on the computer monitor. “I will wait for thee in my parlour at twelve of the clock, the night following the discovery. See thou art alone and have our friend of silver is with thee…”
This miniseries is often subtly humorous in dry ways. Based on the 1969 book by Martin Amis, who in real life and in fiction, was known for being a tom cat and a very terrible alcoholic. Still he was loved enough by the British public to be ranked on the fifty best writers list. The screenplay was written by Malcolm Bradbury and the dialogue is sharp and the whole story has a cynical eye on cleverly spying on a society that hasn’t really changed that much, even in the thin mask of this PC controlled world. Old men still dribble spinach down their chins, and successful alcoholics still desire power, money and often get it by digging up old graves.
Mark Slade, HMS
Read the previous installment.