The title gives it away, even though it’s hiding in plain
sight. While etymologically it signifies nothing, it reveals that the BBC
production The Song of Lunch is styled
after the mock heroic narrative poem conventions popular in the Regency Period.
In particular, the title hearkens back to Alexander Pope’s epic poem The Rape of the Lock, a seriocomic masterpiece
that blows the cutting of a lock of hair out of proportion. In other words, it
is a perfect storm in a teacup.
And what a storm is brewing in the glasses served at The Song of Lunch. This is a dramatization
of a contemporary narrative poem by Christopher Reid. He (Alan Rickman) once had
a passionate affair with her (Emma Thompson). She moved away long ago to marry
a successful novelist in Paris, while he has an editorial job he despises. The funereal
volume of poems he composed based on her departure went out of print, “creeping
into triple digits” in terms of its pitiful sales. This is their first meeting
in fifteen years, at a restaurant that he heavily criticizes but also cherishes
because they both shared happy memories there: it was their place. Directed by Niall McCormick, the film runs an
economical 48 minutes. Little actual dialogue is spoken, as the lunch is almost
narrated entirely by him. He still aches for her, as the production flashes
back to their intense lovemaking, while resenting her choice to leave him
behind.
The inner monologue he intones deliciously elevates the
exercise of mastication to Herculean heights. The ordering of the meals from
both he and she, informed by feeling and recognition of old patterns, invokes
different reactions from the same waiter and reveals calculated premeditation
usually reserved for warfare. (Reid would not be above assigning similarly
heavy significance to the arrangement of forks, at least for this occasion.) No
drop of wine falls without threatening to echo across the universe, magnifying
its terrifyingly insignificant significance to shake the heavens. To give you a
better flavor of it, here is the opening of the text:
It’s an ordinary day in a publishing house
of ill repute.
Another moronic manuscript
comes crashing down the chute
to be turned into art.
This morning it was Wayne Wanker’s
latest dog’s dinner
of sex, teenage philosophy
and writing-course prose.
Abracadabra, kick it up the arse -
and out it goes
to be Book of the Week
or some other bollocks.
What a fraud. What a farce.
And tomorrow: who knows
which of our geniuses
will escape from the zoo
and head straight for us
with a new masterpiece
lifeless in his jaws.
Reader, you may have noticed that neither character is
named, thereby throwing the drama into sharp relief. Not only are the acts and
omissions of these two people of nominal interest other than to themselves (he arguably
more than she), but they are also greatly exaggerated. It should surprise no
one that his hateful volume of regret features an Orpheus and Eurydice analogy
elevated to absurd dimension. Like the mock heroic narrative poem tradition,
Reid blatantly and deliberately flaunts the narrative excesses to grotesque
grandeur, like a Grand Guignol of emotions dancing on the frays of his last
nerve.
Although he is the orator of these proceedings, it should be
no surprise that she has her own perception of how they once were. As the wine
flows and he polishes off the first bottle, she presents her own view of their
relationship and rips his analogy apart, then rebuilds it using new signifiers
to reflect his own character – the one he cannot or refuses to accept – back onto
him. The Song of Lunch, for its
deadly hilarious and delectable turns of phrase, also harbors buried anguish,
stuffed away in the deepest chambers of the soul, slouching forth to be borne
again. At its heart, the poem says that
as grander emotions like love, lust and anger subsides, they are replaced by
disappointment. It’s the ultimate sign that one is getting older when
once-all-consuming passions surrender to resignation and regret. At one point,
there is no longer any energy to be angry, only the gradual acceptance that a
Henry James character once uttered in a devastating cri de couer, “We can never again be what we once were!”
The Song of Lunch received
scant attention in North America until Emma Thompson received a surprise Emmy
nomination for Best Actress this summer. It is so little-seen that neither its
IMDB nor its Rotten Tomatoes pages have any memorable quotes submitted for it.
The fact that such a symphony of the English language is not enshrined anywhere
on the Internet for the aliens to find, but where reality show sound bites run
unabated, is a crying shame.
If, after a summer of junk culture you crave a meal of
substantive art, tuck into The Song of
Lunch.
