Hogfather.

[starlady]

Hogfather. Dir. Vadim Jean, 2006.

I saw this BBC TV miniseries at a holiday shindig recently, and I thought it was pretty damn awesome--and that it truly captured some essence of the Christmas Hogswatch spirit at its best.

This is based on the Discworld novel of the same name that I haven't read, and since it's a miniseries, it has the length of time to be, I assume, very faithful to the original: to wit, after the Auditors, who want to make the Discworld sensible, hire Teatime (it's pronounced "Tay-ah-ti-may") of the Assassin's Guild to do away with the Hogfather, Death's granddaughter Susan must journey to the Tooth Fairy's castle to save the day while Death holds down the fort by filling in for the Hogfather, without belief in whom the sun will not rise again.

Hogswatch bears a surprising resemblance to our Christmas, even though it's just another solar festival, and though I don't always enjoy Discworld (*ducks the rocks and cabbages*), I quite liked the movie, particularly Ian Richardson as the voice of Death and Michelle Dockery as Susan, who is just AWESOME. Seriously, I cannot tell you how awesome Susan is, or how much she will never get to have the normal life she wants, because of who she is and who her grandfather is. Also, the guy who played Adm. Padorin in The Hunt for Red October is the Chancellor of the Unseen University, which was cool.

So, yes. I can't really venture to say what people who feel differently about Christmas than I do will think of this movie, but in my thoroughly secular/solstical love of the holiday, I quite enjoyed the movie, particularly when Death starts asking the uncomfortable questions about Hogswatch, and Susan fights to defend it because of the good it does. They're both right, and they're right that humans need to believe in something, whether it's the Hogfather, or whatever, or just that the sun will rise again.

Comments

[holyschist]

It is, in most respects, extremely faithful to the book--with verbatim dialogue. The one major change I remember is Susan's respond to one of the kids asking if the Hogfather is real, which is much funnier and much more cynical in the book (especially since the reader knows that Susan knows all this stuff is real, even though she might rather it weren't).

I really like the Hogfather adaptation.

[recessional]

It's quite faithful. The book is a little more powerful, just because of the way Pratchett works with some things to let you fill in your OWN imagery (my sequence of the Hogfather Through the Ages is a bit different, because of things I know/was exposed to/etc), but yeah, it's a good watch.

It's also one of my favourites of the books.

[troisroyaumes]

I love Susan so much! <3 And yes, it's a pretty great adaptation of the book. I have a copy if you want to borrow when you get back.

[amaresu]

I was just thinking of watching this tonight, then I realized it's 3am and I should really go to bed as I need to work tomorrow. It's one of the most faithful adaptations I've seen for book to movie that didn't end up crappy. They cut out a couple of scenes that I really like and changed a few details, but overall it works really well.

I love Susan so much.

[langwidere]

I was not such a terribly huge fan of the Hogfather movie, because I loved the book so much. I remember thinking that Teatime was very badly cast and not scary at all, and that the whole shebang had about one-twentythousandth of the novel’s depth. But, despite that, I still enjoyed it quite a bit and will probably watch it this afternoon while trying not to pass out from carb overload.

I think Susan is so popular because she’s the female version of that male character everyone likes so much — the Dark Other done properly, a figure upon whose noble person we are able to detect the fetters of genuine heroism. Finally, right? (I love her too, btw.)