Two recs, off-the-grid edition

An unlikely hero's journey adventure series and my new favorite sports documentary

Apr 12, 2024

Last week, I went on a walking holiday.

For the Americans among you, that means we essentially went hiking for a week, except the landscape where we were (and in much of the UK) isn’t quite dramatic enough for it to constitute hiking. So, instead, we tromped through lots of mud, and up and down a few small hills, for something like 85 kilometers. We saw a few horses, a lot of sheep (lambs!!), some pheasants, a handful of cows, and several castles.

This is a thing people do in the UK, and I’ve been meaning to give it a try for a while, despite my general aversion to anything approaching camping. (We did not camp, don’t worry.) Having visitors from the US is the best excuse for it, especially when they are your sister, who plans the whole thing for you.

For the most part, the whole adventure lived up to whatever expectations I had. The landscape was gorgeous, we only got rained on a few times, I finally understood the appeal of cask ales (aka flat, warm beer), and it’s really nice to spend the whole day using your body and being outside. 10 out of 10, would walk again.

Well, except for one thing.

I’ve had a really exhausting few months. To be honest, I’ve had a really exhausting few years. This isn’t meant as a complaint, but I work all the time. It’s a choice I’m mostly fine with. But the last few months in particular have been very full-on. And so when the possibility of five days of walking in nature – and, thus, away from my various devices and work responsibilities – presented itself, I was thrilled at the idea of taking a real break.

Not only a break, but a refresh. There’s a lot of research about how our brains are very connected to our physical movement, and I often have my best ideas and biggest breakthroughs while on long walks. At the very least, long walks encourage boredom and allowing your mind to wander, which let things percolate in your subconscious and inspire creativity. To my tired, burnt-out brain, this sounded like a dream. I imagined coming back to London bursting with new ideas and feeling excited to dive into my work again.

So you can imagine my disappointment when that turned out to be my one expectation that wasn’t met. I came back to London exhausted. Like, good exhausted. But we walked the equivalent of 50+ miles, mostly through muddy fields, over five days, and my brain didn’t end the days with the ability to do much more than eat a big pub dinner and sleep. I had no new story ideas and no major breakthroughs on any of my projects, and I am, if anything, just as tired as before, if somewhat less attached to my computer.

I don’t want to cry foul. Surely, this must work for other people, or it wouldn’t continue to be touted as restorative and inspiring. All I can think, then, is that I must have done it wrong.

Which leads me to the only logical conclusion: Five days isn’t long enough. I used to say that you really need at least three weeks for a proper vacation, so maybe the same logic applies here. If anyone would like to test this hypothesis with me on a three-week walking holiday in the future, let me know.

In the meantime, I will be once again banging my head against a wall, begging for inspiration.

Rec 1
Blue Eye Samurai (TV)

You know when you finally watch something that people have been telling you for ages that you’ll love, and then you love it, and you wonder why you didn’t watch it sooner?

Right, so, this was one of those shows for me.

In this action/adventure/classic hero’s journey series set in 17th-century Japan, a blue-eyed warrior whose biracial (half white, half Japanese) heritage makes them an outcast seeks revenge against the four white men who could possibly be their father.

Look, there’s so much I want to tell you about why this might be the perfect show for me, but there are some great reveals that I don’t want to spoil. So, let’s talk about all the other great things:

This show doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, it’s fundamentally a really classic hero’s quest: angry, isolated person works super hard to learn skills to achieve goal, then sets out on adventures to achieve goal and acquires friends along the way, while also learning that maybe they can’t do everything alone and that that they are valuable in and of themselves, too.

The difference is that it takes this base and does it really well, in fresh, surprising, and fun ways. It pushes tropes further, so you don’t see the twists coming, and it plays around with your expectations. It’s weird and funny, and catches you off-guard in exciting and creative ways. It even plays around with the storytelling format and, at times, uses a blend of Japanese and western story traditions to effectively land beats and reveals. There were even several moments that genuinely made my jaw drop.

And then there’s the animation. I know that animation has become more mainstream for shows aimed at adult audiences, and I absolutely applaud that. I’ve even suggested it to fellow screenwriters as a way to get ambitious projects made. But I have to admit that I really don’t watch much animation beyond Miyazaki and Pixar films.

Well, Blue Eye Samurai might change that. Seriously. The art in this series is absolutely stunning. My sister even pointed out how many different styles of animation they use, depending upon what’s happening in the story. As effective as cinematography can be in elevating storytelling, I’ve never appreciated the way animation can do even more. I also had no idea that violence and sex in animation could be just as horrifying/graphic as in a live-action film/show.

Anyway, have a blast, and join me in waiting with bated breath for season 2!

Where: Netflix

Rec 2
Copa 71 (film)

If 14-year-old me had known about both Blue Eye Samurai and Copa 71 – and that I would watch them the same week, and get to interview the director of the latter – she would have died from happiness. (The only thing that might have made her happier would have been another Star Wars film, but we can sideline that for now.) See, in addition to feminist heroes’ journeys, one of my great middle school loves was playing soccer.

Copa 71 opens with an interview with US Women’s National Team legend Brandi Chastain. The interviewer asks her when the first Women’s World Cup was. Chastain says, “1991.” She would know, she was there.

And then, the interviewer gives her footage to watch of a huge soccer (football) match from the 1970s. There are 110,000 people in the stadium, it’s clearly a big deal.

And when the players come out, they’re all women.

Copa 71 is a documentary about the second Women’s World Cup, held in Mexico City in 1971. (Incidentally, the first was in Italy in 1970.) 1991 may have been the first FIFA-sanctioned one, but it was in fact the third. And almost no one – including none of the trail-blazing women players of the 1990s USWNT – knew that the 1970s ones had even happened. Because FIFA buried it. And almost none of the women who played in 1971 were allowed to play again.

So you know what you’re getting into: I honestly cried almost the entire film. Yes, I am a crier. Yes, this film felt very personal. But still. It’s that perfect blend of euphoric and devastating, the encapsulation of bittersweet.

It’s a thrill to get to see a bunch of girls and young women from around the world get to do something they loved, on a huge world stage, celebrated especially by the people of Mexico. Many of them were ostracized or mocked for playing in their home countries – including the Mexican team, which is a mind-fuck – and this was the first time many of them felt truly free. It feels, in many ways, like the embodiment of the women’s liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s, the goal that they were fighting for. To get to see it – to see the incredible footage that the documentary team painstakingly collected, restored, and colorized – feels so rare and special. An unalloyed good, in an often-shitty world.

I could gush for pages, to be honest. The hilarious and heartfelt interviews. The infuriating history of women being cut out of the sport. The exciting games, pieced together for the screen. But it’s only a 90-minute film, so I suggest you just watch it for yourself.

Where: remaining UK screenings, and I think it’s about to come out in the US

That’s all for this week! What are you reading/watching/listening to that I should be aware of? Drop me a line (or comment) to let me know if you check out any of my recs and what you think.

Please spread the word and I’ll see you in a couple weeks.

xo
Kate

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