Our Reflections On “Dean Spanley”
Luky and I watched the 2008 film, Dean Spanley, together the other evening. He has not stopped talking about it since. According to him there are too many dog life accuracies for it (the story) not to have some root in reality.
Dean Spanley – based on the short novel, “My Talks With Dean Spanley” by the Irish fantasy author, Lord Dunsany (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett) – is a film of metaphysics and love, directed by Toa Fraser and featuring indispensable performances by Peter O’Toole, Sam Neill, Jeremy Northam and Bryan Brown. I’ve been forced to return to the cable box to view it at least twice again. In addition to my predictable response to its meaning of life-oriented message, I have to admit that, for me, part of the movie’s attraction is O’Toole’s dependable demonstration of our best intention of the term, “actor.”
Putting my own thoughts and reactions aside for now, I can only say that Luky has gone to a deeper place with the whole experience. He stops short of attributing sixth sense sorts of powers to anyone in particular – with the exception of Lord Dunsany (whom Luky is convinced must have held some spiritual connection with canines somewhere along the way) – but the argument I keep hearing from him is that, for whatever reason and by whatever mechanism, there simply is no way the Dean Spanley story could have been imagined and told without a human-dog mind meld of one kind or another.
I don’t even try to delve. He’s thinking and feeling something personal, and it’s leading him to ideas about Irish authors and fantasy literature. The last thing I want to do now is mention that Lord Dunsany’s family name, “Plunkett,” is also the name of O’Toole’s character, Peter Plunkett, in the 1988 haunted castle comedy, High Spirits. I’m afraid we’d be packing for a transatlantic flight.
Dean Spanley – based on the short novel, “My Talks With Dean Spanley” by the Irish fantasy author, Lord Dunsany (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett) – is a film of metaphysics and love, directed by Toa Fraser and featuring indispensable performances by Peter O’Toole, Sam Neill, Jeremy Northam and Bryan Brown. I’ve been forced to return to the cable box to view it at least twice again. In addition to my predictable response to its meaning of life-oriented message, I have to admit that, for me, part of the movie’s attraction is O’Toole’s dependable demonstration of our best intention of the term, “actor.”
Putting my own thoughts and reactions aside for now, I can only say that Luky has gone to a deeper place with the whole experience. He stops short of attributing sixth sense sorts of powers to anyone in particular – with the exception of Lord Dunsany (whom Luky is convinced must have held some spiritual connection with canines somewhere along the way) – but the argument I keep hearing from him is that, for whatever reason and by whatever mechanism, there simply is no way the Dean Spanley story could have been imagined and told without a human-dog mind meld of one kind or another.
I don’t even try to delve. He’s thinking and feeling something personal, and it’s leading him to ideas about Irish authors and fantasy literature. The last thing I want to do now is mention that Lord Dunsany’s family name, “Plunkett,” is also the name of O’Toole’s character, Peter Plunkett, in the 1988 haunted castle comedy, High Spirits. I’m afraid we’d be packing for a transatlantic flight.
posted by RAM at 11:11 AM
1 Comments:
Absolutely bowled over by it...my dog Cyril was one at the end runnning circles ,although he is more of a small hound !!!!!
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