Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo have a wonderful couple of hours every Friday afternoon on BBC Radio 5, talking about films. This week they ‘reviewed’ The Eagle film based on Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth – indeed they made use of an email sent to them by one Anthony Lawton of this parish. Although it does not feature in this clip, at the end of the section in the full programme they pronounce:
“Verily, tis a hit!”
Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel The Eagle of the Ninth has been loved by the young and the young-at-heart since its publication in 1954. More thoughtful and certainly more historically informed than the Boy’s Own-style adventure quests to which it has sometimes mistakenly been likened, it has all the ingredients of a terrific adventure thriller: an epic quest narrative, strong characters, the tangled interplay of pride, loyalty and masculinity.
Director Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland) is also fascinated by those qualities. Working with screenwriter Jeremy Brock (Last King … , Mrs Brown), he brings his sharp, muscular intelligence to bear on this always enjoyable, if not always successful treatment of a story that was also told just last year, in Neil Marshall’s Centurion.
Rosemary Sutcliff’s book The Eagle of the Ninth was much loved by Rachel Cooke, writer for The Guardian and The Observer, which left her with “girlish hope in her heart” as she went to see the film, The Eagle. She spoke of the film on BBC 4 in the UK, on the review programme Front Row, with Mark Lawson.
I went to see this with so much girlish hope in my heart because it was one of my favourite books, and what I feel about it is its a great film on its own terms, but if you were a Rosemary Sutcliff fan I think you might be disappointed by it. It’s not as nuanced as the book, it’s not as tender or as lyrical as the book. It’s a very angry frenetic film, it’s very one note, there’s not much light and shade. It’s a buddy film with axes and bearskins.
Source: Listen at 1.05 minutes here
Are you a Rosemary Sutcliff fan, and what did you think of the film? Do post your reactions and reflections in the comments here; or a longer review at the You Write tab (see at the top of the page) … And if you are not someone who has up to now read Rosemary Sutcliff, I do hope the film leads you to the book, and indeed to The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers, two books in a trilogy of Roman novels, all published by Oxford University Press in film tie-in versions.
Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth is grounded in a view about what happened to the ninth Roman legion. The fate of the legion continues to be debated, most recently on the BBC website, by Miles Russell of Bournemouth University.
The British problem was of deep concern to Roman central government. Thanks to a tombstone recovered from Ferentinum in Italy, we know that emergency reinforcements of over 3,000 men were rushed to the island on “the British Expedition”, early in Hadrian’s reign. The emperor himself visited the island in AD 122, in order to “correct many faults”, bringing with him a new legion, the Sixth.
The fact that they took up residence in the legionary fortress of York suggests that the “great losses” of personnel, alluded to by Fronto, had occurred within the ranks of the Ninth.
Archaeological evidence of the legion’s fate is scarce
It would seem that Sutcliff was right after all.
It was the Ninth, the most exposed and northerly of all legions in Britain, that had borne the brunt of the uprising, ending their days fighting insurgents in the turmoil of early 2nd Century Britain.
Source: BC News – The Roman Ninth Legion’s mysterious loss.
See also on this blog a post on The symbolism of The Eagle of the Ninth | What happened to the ninth legion: Part IX?
Interview here in The Times newspaper with your blog’s author – about Rosemary Sutcliff, the book The Eagle of the Ninth and the film The Eagle.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 