Pray for Timmy: The Famous Five will be directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, director of Bronson (left) and The Neon Demon < p>Since Enid Blyton's first book, The Famous Five, was published in 1942, the Famous Five series has gained a reputation as the most rewarding family entertainment imaginable. Each of the novels revolved around four children — Julian, Anna, Dick and George — and their dog Timmy, each of whom got into light scrapes in the unchanging English countryside, where modern technology (or war) was never mentioned and where the characters took place in a permanent prepubertal period.
Although the books have previously been made into films by companies such as the Children's Film Foundation and in an animated version on Disney Channel, there has never been a big-budget, high-profile film adaptation before. Now, finally, there is. But the truly stunning and controversial decision taken by the BBC is to hire none other than the dark lord of modern television and film as creator and executive producer of the show: Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn.
< p>It is extremely unlikely that the intended audience of the television series The Famous Five will know anything about Winding Refn's work, which is probably for the best. Even watching a few moments of his ultra-violent films like Only God Forgives and Valhalla Rising, or his recent streaming shows Copenhagen Cowboy and Too Old to Die Young is enough to traumatize most adult adults, not to mention about impressionable young children.
Some of the more extreme moments in his paintings include Tom Hardy in Bronson graphically beating and clubbing virtually every character he comes into contact with; Ryan Gosling digs into his late mother's belly in Only God Forgives; or Mads Mikkelsen killing countless Scandinavians in the almost hallucinatory Valhalla Rebellion. There are also many graphic depictions of rape and sexual assault in his films.
However, Blyton Manor and the BBC decided that the man who portrayed Ryan Gosling smashing a bandit's head into mush in the Drive elevator was the perfect person to capture those serene days of innocence and play. As Patricia Hidalgo, Director of Children's Programming at the BBC, said: “Bringing these books to life with this new take on The Famous Five is a real treat for BBC viewers and a celebration of British heritage. These stories are loved all over the world, and bringing families together is a key part of our strategy, so we hope it introduces a new generation of viewers to these wonderful adventures.»
Disturbing: still from Winding Refn's film «The Neon Demon»
Winding Refn is known both for his uncompromising attitude towards his highly personal films and for his unfailing frankness in his disagreements with the people who finance his projects. However, he seems to have relented, judging by his statement about his latest project. “All my life I have fought vigorously to remain an adventurous child,” he said. «By reimagining The Famous Five, I keep that vision alive while bringing these iconic stories to life for a new progressive audience, instilling the vague charm and charm of childhood in current and future generations.»
It's hard not to believe that the director isn't speaking with a hard tongue on the cheek. Despite the excellence of many of his early projects, few would call Winding Refn's ultra-violent, deeply misanthropic work a display of many playful or childlike qualities. Instead, he thrives on portraying extreme states of mind, where brutality goes hand in hand with something almost existential. This is not what one would imagine for the adventurers of Kirrin Island.
Winding Refn is at least in shape when it comes to adapting beloved British authors. After directing his psychological crime thriller Fear X in 2003, his production company Jang Go Star was forced into bankruptcy by a commercial failure. Therefore, the director accepted the first paid job offered to him, which turned out to be an adaptation of Miss Marple's latest novel, Nemesis. As he frankly said in an interview: “I was fucking broke. I went bankrupt and owed the bank £1 million. I repaid by directing Pusher sequels, but I had no money myself. And I'm really tired of Denmark. I needed a break.»
He dismissed it — and another Marple movie he asked to have his name removed from the credits — as nothing more than a hack job done along with «people I might not have respected», though he praised the Marple star. Geraldine McEwan as a «fucking powerhouse» and cast actress Amanda Burton in his next film, the surreal crime biopic Bronson. Since then, he has done only brutal, disturbing work. So far, i.e.
It remains unclear whether the BBC has carried out even the most rudimentary due diligence on Winding Refn, and whether this could cause dire problems down the road. In an interview with The Guardian in 2013, when Only God Forgives was released, he stated that his work «looks like pornography» and that «I'm a pornographer. I make films about what excites me. What I want to see. I very rarely understand why I want to see this, and I have learned not to obsess over this part.
Whether anyone likes Winding Refn's intense and inimitable brand of violence that often goes from violent to nauseating, there's no question that just as Scorsese was defined as a «violent director» for most of his heyday in the Seventies and Eighties years, so the Danish director reveled in the image on the screen of what seemed inedible.
Nicolas Winding Refn with his Neon Demon star El Fanning in Cannes, 2016. Photo: AP
It has served him well enough so far, although the Hollywood breakthrough that seemed to beckon after the critical and commercial success of the excellent Drive never materialized; instead, he turned his attention to long streaming series, which went badly with Too Old to Die Young (where he very publicly denounced Amazon show sponsors) and better when it came to last year's Copenhagen Cowboy (hypnotically insane a saga of human trafficking and superpowers made for Netflix).
At its best, as with the original Pusher, Bronson and Drive, Winding Refn's Kubrickian flair and visual brilliance make his films some of the most poignant and compelling of the last two decades. At its worst—Only God Forgives in particular—it's hard not to feel that this excitement has gone to Winding Refn's head, and the results are almost imperceptible.
However, it's easy to wonder if Winding Refn's temporary desire to be an uncompromising obnoxious kid has been canceled out by the opportunity to take on what will apparently be an easy and lucrative assignment. It seems unlikely that there will be scenes of ritual abuse directed at Timmy's dog or George having his eyes gouged out in a merciless close-up. However, the director promises that the show will be «progressive». His definition of the term may differ greatly from that of the BBC.
Racism, sexism, snobbery: Enid Blyton's books have recently been criticized Photo: Hulton Deutsch
However, the Famous Five series isn't all that simple. The books' basic prose style, uncomplicated plots, and rudimentary characterizations have been criticized for decades — Blyton claimed that on average, a novel takes her a week, and the only question one can ask is «How long?» The books were «delicately revised» in 2010, and Blyton's slang was incredibly updated, and by 2016, Ann McNeil, director of Hodder publishing, who made the changes, admitted: «The feedback we have received over six years shows that love for The famous five remained intact, and there was no need to change mother for mother, sweater for jumper.
A few years later, however, a different type of sensibility comes into play, and many libraries now display only updated versions of books; if anyone wants to borrow the originals, expect «an informal warning system to remind customers of the language contained in the old edition». Blyton is in good company: virtually everyone from Nancy Mitford to Ernest Hemingway now has such warnings about inappropriate and outdated book content.
But given the persistent accusations of snobbery, racism, sexism and virtually every other vice known to mankind, the adaptation of her work now seems less like useful family entertainment than an act of witty provocation.
Abnormal: Tom Hardy in Bronson (2008) Photo: handout
Perhaps this is what attracted Winding Refn to these popular, but, let's be frank, outdated and boring books. Like his friend and fellow Dane Lars von Trier, he is a filmmaker who delights in poking the establishment in the eye with the sharpest stick. No true provocateur could pass up the opportunity to take his «progressive» adaptation of The Famous Five and turn it into something original and surprising.
And perhaps Blyton herself would have approved of going beyond the possible; actress Helena Bonham Carter, who played the author in the 2009 biopic, described her as «a complete workaholic, achievement junkie, and extremely cunning businesswoman,» and one can only believe the writer would have assumed that all publicity was good publicity. .
It remains to be seen whether the three 90-minute films (which have already begun filming) will be enjoyable to watch or something more interesting. But only someone smug — or ignorant — would look at a director, such a rebel, and consider him a reliable pair of hands for modern children's entertainment. In «Five on Treasure Island», Julian sighs, «It wasn't a good adult fight. They could do whatever they pleased.» The same can be said for Blyton's new legacy custodian. He really will do exactly what he likes.
The infamous five: more «progressive» adaptations of children's books
Alex Diggins
1. Twist (2021)
Poor Charles Dickens. As any viewer of Stephen Knight's recent adaptation of Great Expectations for the BBC knows, the great man's work has been nasty again and again (and again…).
And yet, few of these parodies can compare with this work by Martin Owen. In fact, it is almost admirable how obstinately Owen spoils everything good and sincere in Dickensian Oliver Twist.
Twist is now a dirty graffiti artist played by Ruff Lowe yapping in a bad cockney. Rita Ora is a sultry Artful Rogue who uses parkour to escape the police. And Michael Caine is wheelchair-bound as Fagin's tech mastermind.
2. Peter Pan & Wendy (2023)
Far from slapstick to compare to Twist, David Lowry's adaptation of J. M. Barry's tale of frustrated adolescence and impractical pirates nonetheless generated controversy.
Some quipped that Wendy's increased role and Peter Pan's noticeably weaker role upset the balance of the story. While others objected to the dreary and barren environment, which felt more like Neverland than a damp October semester on Barr.
But what did they expect? Lowry is the author of the cheerfully bizarre The Green Knight and Ghost Story, a melancholy novel about a ghost in a sheet. Perhaps it's a foretaste of how Nicolas Winding Refn's unleashing the beloved children's property could play out.
3. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)
Copyright is a strange and valuable thing. It protects artistic integrity, enriches intellectual property lawyers, and may have once prevented the gonzo-British filmmaker from turning perfectly useful stories about Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and his Hundred Acre Woodland pals into a spooky horror slasher.
Pooh Bear, Serial Killer: Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 'reimagined' Children's books by A. A. Milne
No more. Answering a question that no one wanted to answer, namely: what if Pooh became a serial killer and developed a taste for human meat? “Blood and Honey” is Rhys Freik-Waterfield’s debut work based on the tales of A. A. Milne after their 95-year copyright expired.
Next on his list of «reimaginings»? Peter Pan, apparently featuring Tinkerbell, a drug addict. Can't wait.
4. The Seeker: Darkness Rising (2007)
The early 2000s were the heyday of poor-quality screen translations of children's books. We have the tepid versions of the C.S. Lewis Narnia books, the hideous slant on Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy — and, still properly buried, this dark, stern take on the Susan Cooper novel Darkness Rises sequence.
Gritty: a scene from The Seeker: The Dark Rises
It starred Alexander Ludwig as the 14-year-old hero, Ian McShane as his mentor, and Christopher Eccleston as the evil Rider. But the best actors couldn't hide its callousness, dubious CGI, and distance from the original books.
Even Cooper distanced herself from it—interestingly, not because of its (terrible) quality, but because, as an atheist, she objected to the overt Christian mission of its director, David L. Cunningham.
5 . Fünf Freunde/Famous Five (2012)
There is nothing objectively terrible about this adaptation. Or at least not in the way a person with limited knowledge of German might say. But based on the damn cutesy trailer, let's take a chance and say it looks terrible.
Of course, Timmy is a real talkative beagle, and the gang races crime-solving motorcycles. (In this case, something related to the experiments of a scientist on a mysterious island.)
But at some point, the Five steals a hovercraft, which definitely did not happen in Enid Blyton's novels. And — horror of horrors — George wears a beanie. Shendlich!
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