Watch ‘An Angel At My Table’, the Jane Campion film about New Zealand author Janet Frame. I’ve seen it before, round about the time it came out in the early 90s; but when I see a copy in the library on my way home tonight I feel an urgent need to watch it again. Sometimes the best books and films read you, rather than the other way round. I’m impressed by how much I can recall; it’s full of poetically vivid little moments that connect on a searingly personal level, for me at least. Something about the character of Ms Frame having this almost terminal anxiety and awkwardness, yet attracting attention with her beacon-like hairdo: a cartoonish bubbly mass of red curls. All my favourite writers have haircuts that can been seen from outer space.
The pivotal scene is her last attempt to be a teacher, in 1945. She stands at the blackboard about to begin a class, with a kindly school inspector watching amongst the children. She takes a piece of chalk and is about to apply it to the blackboard when she suddenly stops. Absolute silence. The children are waiting. The inspector is waiting. Time seems to halt. She stares at the chalk. Cut to a close up. It looks like the most alien object on earth. After this excruciating pause, she finally looks up and asks the inspector if she can be excused for a minute. And she walks out. Weeping, she walks out of the school grounds, and keeps going. She seems like the most ill-fitting and useless person on earth.
