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The Zuyder Zee Sized Hole At The Heart Of The Miniaturist




So, The Miniaturist (warning - spoilers abound). 

It looked amazing and all. It really, really did. Those interiors were straight out of a Dutch still life. The framing and perspectives were painterly.  Someone spent a lot of money on the costumes; the silks looked as though they cost more than the entire budget for many programmes.

The casting was pretty fabulous even if Anya Taylor-Joy is more familiar playing a witch/alien/robot  of an evil cast of mind and one rather expected her at some point to transmigrate into a rabid monster doll, crawl unbidden from the depths of the dolls house (on which more below) in the manner of Ringu and consume half the population of Amsterdam (in 1686) before flooding the dykes and sinking the city beneath the waves. That might actually have made more sense.

I may still have been dazed from LFC just buying the most expensive defender in the history of the world.

I may not have drunk enough to be in the perfect state of comatose acquiescence lying prone on the couch.

I have no problem whatsoever with the ending of a journey of self-discovery and development, personal growth and taking responsibility for dealing with circumstance. None.

What I do have a problem with is that the central plot device - a weird dolls house which is gradually populated by articles which seems to presage events - whilst clearly not a complete macguffin, made no sense whatsoever in terms of the central dynamic. 

In particular:

(a) why does the husband decide that a dolls house is just what his new wife needs to distract her from the fact that he is not going to be the husband that she thought she was marrying? 

(b) he gives no sense of actually knowing or having any connection with the elfin character actually making and delivering the miniatures - so ....

(c) there is no explanation of why said elfin character other than clearly being several degrees brighter than most of the population of Amsterdam (in 1686) would pay particular attention to observing in minute detail the goings on in this particular house

(d) how said elfin character is able to capture parakeets - which when last seen seemed destined for a long and doubtless ultimately fruitless flight back towards the Tropics - when it looks as though reaching up to close the shutters might prove fatal to her. 

I may be doing this production and possibly the book (which I haven't read) a disservice but this looked like a classic case of, so to speak, a (dolls) house which the author thought was in need of a home. 

Then it's a case of don't think too hard about the detail because, well, this is a pretty amazing idea with just the right combination of spookiness and mystery so people will just kinda switch off and go with the flow and be pretty fascinated by all that period detail. 

And wondering how to capture an escaped parakeet.

And whether the main character will turn into a rabid monster doll.

And whether LFC have bought the best defender in the world or just been duped by a feint from a competitor. Rather like this production.







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