Outlander 8: Both sides now: the wedding night; the magic of it all

Opening short, high camera shot to down below of Claire (Caitronia Balfe) off to marry Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies)

First switch now Black Jack Randal (Tobias Menzies) is sadistically flogging Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan)

The Wedding: Claire marrying the man her husband Frank said she’d never do

Claire’s voice: My husband.
Frank’s: Nothing you could ever do could stop my loving you.
Reverend Wakefield: Jonathan, Jonathan Wolverton Randall, finally. Captain of Dragoons in the British Army, and your direct ancestor.Otherwise known as Black Jack.
Claire’s in retrospect: I heard stories of a place called Craigh Na Dun.
Claire in present-past: I was no longer in the 20th century. What was Frank going through? Claire? Perhaps I was abducted. Perhaps I was dead Or perhaps, worst of all, I had left him for another man =- prologue to Both Sides Now

Dear friends and readers,

The brilliance of this episode derives solely from the capabilities of film. Further the uses of film here to make the same actor appear as diametrically opposed people, Tobias Menzies as Claire’s mid-century husband, Frank, tenderly loving, deeply non-violent, swiftly become in the next scene the sadistic, manipulative, ruthless, distrustful Black Jack whoe proceeds to flog Jamie, the 18th century Scots laird whom Claire falls in love with and has married, or threaten to torture and maim Claire’s face and body. We melt from a setting and film type like those of the 1940s Brief Encounter, drab, quiet, grey and brown, kind, quiet, seemingly non-violent (though not wholly) into the extravaganzas of costume drama with its theatrical flair for the presentation of utter misery (in the person of a beggar, Hugh Munro whose tongue was cut out and legs forever burnt by Muslims who enslaved him in Algiers) and wild landscape places and castes. Both sets suggestive, one character, Randall has buried in him the other and he acts against the central pair of lovers, Jamie and Claire now Randall Fraser, only Randall is a lover too and agonzied lonely victim. The result a multi-directional thrill and expansion only film can do, one whose basic notes are plangency, mystery, desperation and love and intense rivalry, hate.

The vicarage cum boarding house near Inverness where Frank and Claire stayed with Rev Wakefield and Mrs Graham

Frank bent over seeking help in Scottish police station

Jamie and Claire greeting Hugh Munro

The prison fortress to which Claire is taken

Back and forth, forth and back, and there’s no set verbalization for these effects that I know of. One of the goals of this blog is to try to describe and capture the effect of switching back-and-forth in time and using the same actor in the present and past (where the past becomes the present and the present the past): the power of Outlander as a film comes from these juxtapositions and use of the same actor in reversed roles: I’ve be grateful if anyone who has read film studies could supply me with terms or a book (theoretical or not) which supplies them. The best book I know about the use of drab 1940s realism v the Gainsborough-costume drama descendants as liberation is Pam Cook’s Fashioning the Nation: Costume and identity in British Cinema. The first title of the blog was: Back and forth, forth and back, and there’s no set verbalization for these effects that I know of

Gabaldon’s book does not simultaneously with Claire and Jamie’s wedding (Gabaldon could have had an interweaving interlude as is done in Quixote) revert to Black Jack flogging Jamie. Nor upon that, immediately, Claire hearing Frank just then really there by the stones of Craig Na Dune (as was she). Claire is then captured by the British colonials soldiers. We know Jamie has not gone far because he is seeking, after encountering the half-mad (Dickensian character) Hugh Munro (Simon Meacock) (his tongue cut out by Muslims in the Adriatic, his body weakened and frail by years of imprisonment and all that brings inside as well as outside, the vicious British deserters. Nothing worse than a man who betrays and exploits the power of a uniform of an deeply inhumane occupying colonialist force. Gabaldon injects (I want that word with its sense of seepage) the horrors of slavery, cruelty of religions (Munro’s tongue was cut out and his lower legs’ skin burnt 3 degrees), in this plangent, poignant gothic figure:

Jamie to Claire: Aye, well, Munro’s a special case, you see. He was captured by the Turks at sea. Spent a good many years as a slave in Algiers. That’s where he lost his tongue. Cut it out? And poured boiling oil on his legs. It’s how they forced captive Christians to convert to Mussulman religion. Said you came with news, [speaks Gaelic] Ah.
[Grunting] Who? [Grunting] Why would he know? [Grunts] Can he be trusted? [Grunting] What’s his name? Haharack.
Harack? [Grunts] Horrock. [Grunts] Horrocks.[Grunts] When and where does this Horrocks want to meet? [Grunting] All right. All right. [Grunts] Thank you, thank you kindly, Hugh.
Jamie back to Claire: There’s a chance, I can get the price lifted from my head. There’s a witness who can prove my innocence. Claims he was there during my escape from Fort William, saw who actually killed the sergeant.
But I’m not sure I can trust him.
Claire: Is this Horrocks?
Claire: Aye, a redcoat deserter.

Munro is at the mercy of all and one can suggestively parallel him to Frank Randall in 1948. But the redcoat deserter will make Jamie at his mercy in a following episode. All intertwined and interwoven again. In 1948 we watch Frank humiliated by the police whom he drives to the point that they tell him to accept his wife had fled of her own accord, and perhaps with another man. In 1943 Menzies as Frank desperately tries to get the police, anyone, to find and locate her, and Menzies as Black Jack slips into 1743, where he threatens Claire. The effect is that of dream material or nightmare. My point about the value of reading framed texts and no questioning of a point of view.

The meaning is conveyed through the juxtapositions. I suggest we are intended to be moved by the opening of the episode. The film-makers told the return to the kind of black-and-white desperate realism found in the mid-1940s Brief Encounter. We see the Reverend Wakefield (James Fleet) doing all he can to help his boarder-now-friend Frank accept that Claire has left him for good.

The good reverend at his map with its lines: She leaves Craigh Na Dun, gets lost, turns back, tries to follow the Findhorn River, takes a misstep, and then is swept away by the current, all the way down to the Darnaway Forest. Darnaway Forest is 20 miles from where the car was found. Ah, the river is fast, and it was swift that night.She could’ve been carried twice that far. These maps of the area, they’re poor. Looks as though there are bends in the river here where she might have made it to shore, and then found shelter along this ridge, maybe, maybe in a cave.
So she’s tired, she’s lost, she doesn’t know where to turn. So she hunkers down in this cave to keep warm, and lives on fish and frogs while waiting to be found.
Frank: Fish and frogs for seven weeks?

He is thwarted by Frank’s yearnings as well as his housekeeper, Mrs Graham (Tracey Wilkinson), who finally breaks through the Reverend’s taboos against superstitions to tell of the stones, of others who have experienced this transformation. Frank is sceptical and thus disappointed (he had perhaps hoped for an explanation that made sense).

Mrs Graham: The stories are old. Some say as old as the stones themselves, passed down from generation to generation through ballads and songs. I first heard them from my grandmother, and she from hers. The songs tell stories about people who travel through the stones.
Frank: Travel through stone? I’m not sure I take your meaning.
Mrs Graham: Not literally through the stone itself. You see the circle at Craigh Na Dun marks a a place on the earth where the powers of nature come together.
Wakefield: Superstition and twiddletwaddle.
Frank: Go on.
Mrs Graham: The stones gather the powers, and give it focus, like a glass, ye ken? And for certain people, on certain days, it allows them to pierce the veil of time. Mr.Randall, you know your wife went up that hill the day she vanished. I believe she didn’t come back down that hill, at least not in 1945. I believe that she traveled to some other time.
Frank: Where or when would that be? I don’t know.
Mrs Graham: Every traveler is different. They must make their own journey on their own path, but the songs do say that the travelers often return.
Frank: I see.

Frank does not believe in the stones, but ironically when the police officer says that Claire must have gone off with the highlander ghost Frank saw, Frank shouts my wife is not with another man, and the film moves to Claire in Jamie’s arms.

Police officer, officer on the phone: When did you first notice the items were missing? (to sergeant coming in) He’s back.
Sergeant: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I think today’s the day.
Officer on phone: Today, sir?
Sergeant: I have let this go on long enough.
Officer: Today, sergeant. Good luck.
Back to phone: Yes, ma’am, I heard every word you said. I’m gonna send a man over straightaway.
Sergant to Frank Randall: I am sorry, Mr. Randall, you know, I’m very, very sorry. Please believe me when I say I wish there was more that we could do.
Frank: Well, there’s your job, perhaps you could do that.
Sergeant: I know this must be disappointing to you.
Frank: Disappointing? That’s an interesting word.
It suggests expectations that were unmet. My expectations of your department were were low to begin with, and I can assure you that you have met those expectations at every turn.
Sergeant: We have spent the past six weeks searching over 100 square miles of rugged terrain, conducted 175 interviews, invest- Invested over 1,000 man hours.
Frank: I know the litany detective, but tell me, what do you have to show for these for these efforts? My wife has disappeared. Do you have any idea at all what might have happened to her?
Sergeant: We haven’t found a body. Now, that tells me that she’s probably still alive. No blood in the car, no sign of a struggle, Now, that tells me that she probably wasn’t taken against her will.
Frank: Yeah, your favorite theory.
Sergeant: You personally witnessed a man staring up at her window the night before she disappeared.
Frank: I have said from the very beginning that the highlander is certainly involved in some way.
Sergeant: Of course he’s involved, you fool. He’s her lover, and the two of them left together.
Frank in a rage: My wife is not with another man.

Frank however credits the story a prostitute tells him to lure him to a dark place at night where thugs attempt to beat the thousand pound reward for Claire’s reappearance out of him. Here the parallel is made between middle class respectability caught up in street life and the savage murderous fighting of the British and Scots.

Frank seduced by street-walker-prostitute, Rosie Day (Mary Hawkins)

Claire taught to use a dagger

All this done in the woven back-and-forth manner with the matter of Claire’s first days as Jamie’s wife in the Scottish landscape, first assailed by a deeply damaged man, and then attacked brutally. Jamie and the other men teach Claire how to use a dagger and she uses it in another ambush. Claire is so shaken by the experience, angry at herself for having forgotten the life she had led, the quiet man she had known, that she wants to return,

and magically (the right words), there are the stones. In 1947 Frank is making his way towards them after Mrs Graham’s story; he calls to Claire, she hears, she calls back, and rushes to the stone, only to be captured once again and brought to a fortress to be interrogated and tortured by the invulnerable Black Jack.

She running in one era to the stones, he turning in another era running us to her

Again the hour ends on back and forth:

Frank’s despair

turns into Black Jack Randall almost fooled by Claire’s ruse she knows Duke of Sandringham and can harm Jack but he catches her out – note back-and-forth to flashback and then into present-past again:

Black Jack: (we get this double view again hit upon): You still wear your old wedding ring? Sentimental attachment.
I doubt you have a sentimental bone in your body. But the more interesting question is why would Dougal MacKenzie consider you of such value, that he would rather adopt you as one of his own than allow me to question you? I am sure Claire: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Black Jack (prposing a toast) Really? The king.
Claire: The king.
Glack Jack: [Clink] I’m glad to hear that you still consider him your sovereign.
Claire: We MacKenzies are all loyal subjects.
Black Jack: [laughs] That is the single most amusing thing I’ve heard all week.
Claire: So I take it you haven’t been amusing yourself by flogging some innocent prisoners then?
Black Jack: Amusing myself? What an odd thing to say. As you know from our previous meeting, I consider flogging a very serious matter indeed. [Wind howling, fire crackling] [Scraping] Madam, you need to understand your position.
In this hour, our third encounter, I fully intend by any means necessary to discover both your true nature and the secrets that you hold.
Claire: Perhaps you should ask the Duke of Sandringham. [Coughs] Oh, dear me, I do hope that won’t stain. Overvoice of Claire: A dangerous gambit to be sure, but his reaction told me that Frank and the Reverend were right in their speculation.
Flashback to Reverend Wakefield: I suspect your ancestor had a patron, a prominent and powerful man who could protect him from the censure of his superiors.
Frank: Possibly, but it would have to have been someone very high up in the hierarchy of the day to exert that kind of influence. The Duke of Sandringham? The Duke of Sandringham? Black Jack was able to commit his various crimes in the highlands because he was being protected by a powerful man, and the cost of such protection was always silence and fidelity.
Forward to present, Black Jack: What do you know of the duke? [Scoffs]
Claire: Really, captain, must you be so obtuse? Is it not clear by now that you and I are both in the employ of the same great and powerful man?
Black Jack: That is impossible. He would’ve told me.
Claire: [Chuckles] Because he tells you all his secrets? You must be a very special officer indeed.
Black Jack: [Murmurs] I will simply send a message to Sandringham asking him.
Claire: Excellent idea. I’m sure he’ll be most pleased at your skill and acumen at uncovering my identity, or perhaps your disruption of the duke’s carefully laid plans will not be rewarded. Perhaps he will be displeased, and take measures to terminate your special relationship, withdraw the protection to which you’ve become accustomed, and thus leave you at the mercy of your superior officers and local authorities. No, the wisest course of action would be to allow me to continue my mission and give the duke no indication of how close you came to disrupting his efforts on behalf of the king.
Black Jack: You mean, of course, his, uh, his wife’s efforts.
Claire: His wife?
Black Jack: The duchess (references to duchesses are ever self-referential parodic — from LeCarre on). You’ve met her?
Claire: Oh, I’ve never had the pleasure.
Black Jack: Really? An agent of the duke is an agent of the duchess.
Claire (backing down, careful) Well, we have been in communication.
Black Jack: Communication by letter?
Claire: By messenger, yes.
Black Jack: With the duchess?
Claire: That’s who we’re talking about, isn’t it? Yes.
Black Jack: That is, uh that is who we’re talking about. But, of course, um the duke has never been married.
Turning to man at door, pushing him out, close the door: Corporal.
Corporal: I’m sorry, madam.

her terror because the young officer will not risk his job to help her

Yet I know much as the pairing of Jamie and Claire to gain its luminous intensely arousing sexuality depends on the alternation of the drab 1940s quiet relationships of Frank, Claire, the Reverence, Mrs Graham, even their adopted little boy, the strength of the film series as electrifying moments is in the couple Claire and Jamie making love to one another, just before they are set up by killers, and then afterward, after she knifes one on the back and he shots the other dead, clinging to one another

One must pull these images out of the story-grid and see the plot-design as producing these moments, some strengthening within a time frame intense emotions which then flow over to the other time frame and are reversed emotions

I have now received Tara Bennett’s The Making of Outlander, Season 1 and 2, from Amazon.uk, and hope to read it within this coming week, and then post again with the knowledge of what was said about this film-making part of the context. This is 18th century historical material descended from Waverley by way of DuMaurier and time-traveling historical romance-fiction.

Ellen