How a genre and boundary bursting Swedish movie brought back to mind a certain LGBTQ friendly First Grade Opera Tune
I just saw the movie “Border”, Sweden’s entry for this year’s Foreign Film Oscar, and let me say, right off the bat, I recommend this strange, affecting, disturbing, adult, startlingly real seeming fantasy (a make-up nomination and Oscar win is even more likely than for foreign film). But this isn’t a review, for that I suggest you read this one. However certain major spoilers for the movie may follow, although I’ll reveal little of the plot.
“Border” moved me to share a particular first grade opera song, one that was written back in 2003, whose kicky hook entered my thoughts unbidden during one of the films more romantic moments.
This song is called “Troll Affection”.
It’s been fifteen years, and the plot of that particular first grade opera is rather hazy. I remember there was a wizard, a troll, and two other fantastical characters – a fairy and a giant? Anyway, part of the plot revolved around the wizard having a thing for trolls, which he expressed in the rollicking song “Troll Affection”.
Frankly, the words and tune of most of the song are a bit hap-hazard, as some but not most songs written by first graders can turn out to be (yes, they create the words and tunes themselves, I’m merely the scribe and mentor). However it does have a kicky hook when the wizard repeatedly sings “Troll Affection”, followed by four foot stomps the first graders insisted be added to the score.
I just recorded this “Troll Affection” hook quickly with my phone to give you a taste:
Troll Affection – Class 1-1 (2003)
Those bright strings! That jaunty harpsichord! Those chirping flutes! It’s all so very cheery and 1960s and English and the perfect theme song for the merry murder sleuthing of the Miss Marple movies.
This Sunday I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and found myself in front of their monumental Jackson Pollock “Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)”. And once again I had that hallucinogenic experience I often have in front of Jackson Pollock’s famous drip paintings, and which I only have in front of Jackson Pollock’s famous drip paintings.
And yes, I will “hashtag Keep the Secrets”, although I do wonder where the Magical Powers That Be draw the line. Is sharing evocative details from the Lyric theater’s wizarding-world-related renovation violating the Unbreakable Vow? Will Ministry of Magic aurors swoop down on me, confringo-ing my blogpost (or rather, considering my location, will I be busted by MACUSA agents)?
I write not to reveal story secrets but to praise the stagecraft, of which the enveloping atmosphere of the Lyric is one winning element. Of the story, I’ll just posit that “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” is not, as marketers will have you accept, “the 8th book” or even “the 8th part” in the Harry Potter literary saga. The seven Harry Potter books are their own contained galaxy, and the movies, the original adaptations and the Fantastic Beast films, as well as the play and its published script, occupy their own wonderful galaxies within the same universe. At least that’s the perspective I believe allows for the greatest appreciation of all the “content” the Wizarding World provides.
