RIP, Alan Rickman – Always!

What a week!

It’s the sort of week that only a Harry Potter movie can sooth.

First it was David Bowie, then Alan Rickman, and finally it was the death of Celine Dion’s long-time manager and husband Rene Angelil. This cancer is a real jerk.

I am a fan of some Bowie songs and I am glad Dion was discovered, but it was the news of Alan Rickman’s death, on Thursday morning that threw me for a loop. All these men were no longer young, but still it was the dreaded cancer that took them from their families and from fans around the world too soon.

Of course I did not need this sad occasion, or any occasion at all, to get me to watch a Harry Potter movie marathon. As it is fifteen years since he first played the role of Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, this time I am watching and paying particular attention to the brilliant Alan Rickman’s portrayal of one of the favourite literary characters ever created in my opinion.

This is a beautiful overview of Snape’s story.

Tributes have been pouring in, from fellow actors and fans alike, since the news broke suddenly of Alan Rickman’s passing from cancer, at age sixty-nine, on Thursday, January 14th.

Of course this isn’t really him,

in this fake guest voice spot on Family Guy,

but his voice was always so well-known. I’d like to think he wouldn’t have been offended by it.

I did not think of him as a joke. I saw only dedication in the roles he played. I just needed to smile from something since I heard he’d passed away and the clip from Family Guy came back to me.

The tributes, as I say, have been coming fast since news broke, on Twitter, Facebook, and in the media and online:

From J.K. Rowling, Daniel Radcliffe, and other British stars.

to

Evanna Lynch

and her heartfelt post.

Then there came a statement from The Late Show’s

Stephen Colbert.

Rickman’s close colleague and friend Emma Thompson wrote a moving tribute of her own

Here.

I don’t remember Ricman from the role that made him famous in Die Hard or the next role, where he played the villain in Robin Hood.

I do know he came to embody the character audiences always loved to hate on screen, but who was he, as a man, in his off screen life?

I knew him in such roles, perhaps a little lesser known, such as when he starred alongside Johnny Depp and his Harry Potter co-star Helena Bonham Carter in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon barber of Fleet Street”. He was positively evil in that,

but Rickman and Depp sing beautifully in that together.

It was in Harry Potter that I first heard his voice. I don’t forget a voice like that. It was infused with intensity and control over the words he was saying, whatever they just so happened to be. His slow speech grabbed hold and kept hold of my attention, anytime he spoke lines on screen.

I can honestly say that not everything about the movie versions pleased me, as big of a fan of the books as I’ve been since I first read them, but Rickman’s performance as Snape was never a part of my disappointment. He nailed that character, as one of the best cast parts from the entire story.

He was absolutely, terribly mean and you couldn’t help but hate him, as cruel to Harry and everyone else as he always was, but that’s what made him so great as an actor.

He could go from the world of Harry Potter to Shakespeare and almost everything in between. His start with the British Royal Shakespeare Company must have been something to see.

But whether he was playing a Shakespeare character on stage, the Blue Caterpillar from a tale like Alice in Wonderland, a modern literary villain in Harry Potter, or the bad judge in a musical, he was magnificent in whatever he was doing.

It’s strange how the death of someone you’ve never met can get to you, but from a closer source than I ever thought I would have when I first saw him take on the role of Severus Snape, I heard it confirmed what a warm and amazing person he was in real life, not just a fact made known through the celebrity reports and tributes.

His portrayal of Snape brought something important to life for me, as in he jumped off the screen in an extension of the character I loved to hate in the books.

It was Rowling who came up with the sad tale of a life that Snape lived, but it was Alan Rickman who made it real for me. He made that sadness real and I feel that same sadness now.

Rest in peace Allan Rickman.

It will always be Alan, for me, the man who was meant to play Snape. Always and forever he will be it.

Always!

Into The West: RIP Sir Christopher Lee

He was the badass of his day…

Until I became enthralled by the world of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, I was not aware of Sir Christopher Lee.

I had seen him in Sleepy Hollow, but I would not know him from that, if I had been quizzed on the man and the parts he’d played.

The first time I heard Lee’s signature gruff, deep tone, I was a fan. His diction was brilliant. He seemed like a man who meant business.

He seemed to be born to play that role. I was thinking and just saying to a friend that it is bazar how to past generations he will always be more well-known as Dracula, but to me he is and always will be Sauroman.

From “Dracula” to “LOTR”: Remembering the Genius of Sir Christopher Lee

I did not get to meet him or get to know him, like cast members of LOTR, but I can tell that he is one of those rare humans who are larger than life. His brilliance is obvious. His cultured and knowledgeable mind and his sharp wit were most clear in interviews.

Christopher Lee was only Lord of the Rings star to meet J.r.r. Tolkien.

I was born more than a decade after Professor Tolkien’s death. Since falling in love with Middle-earth, Sir Christopher Lee is Professor Tolkien to me. He embodied everything I could imagine Tolkien was. He is a figure of legend, taking on the roles he did over his lifetime.

His monster roles will live on in all their gruesome glory.

He seemed to have a knack for portraying villains.

He played an evil Bond character.

Other than Yoda, his character was the only good thing about the Star Wars films really.

He seemed proud to have worked with Tim Burton in films like Alice In Wonderland and The Hobbit with Peter Jackson.

He had the pronunciation down. He could speak many languages. He liked to sing (opera, musicals, heavy metal) and his singing voice was as powerful and great as his knowledge of Tolkien’s stories.

On discovering LOTR, I purchased the extended edition DVD’s and not only did I lap up the movies, over and over, I also became engrossed in all the extra bonus features included.

One of the interviews with Peter Jackson he spoke to Lee about the sound one might make when shot. Jackson was just doing his job, giving direction as to how he saw the scene. It was then that Lee spoke up and informed his director of the proper sound a man makes when hit. Apparently, it’s an intake of breath. Chilling stuff:

“I’ve seen many men die right in front of me – so many in fact that I’ve become almost hardened by it. Having seen the worst human beings can do to each other, the results of torture, mutilation and seeing someone blown to pieces by a bomb, you develop a kind of shell. But you had to. You had to. Otherwise we never would have won.”

I wonder, as I do about my own grandparents, just what it was like for Lee during his duty in World War II and I heard he wasn’t talking about it.

I grew to love the songs at the end of all three LOTR films. The final one, by Annie Lennox:

Into The West – Lyrics

I must have played this one over and over on repeat, to the point of driving my sister/roommate to the brink, forcing her to yell at me to turn the damn thing off.

🙂

I remember the way Gandalf spoke about the west.

A metaphor for death, Sauroman did not speak the lines, but now I think of them as I contemplate where Lee is now.

Is he somewhere with Professor Tolkien, discussing the world during and since their deaths? What are they discussing, if they could be friends somewhere beyond my understanding?

I have been thinking a lot lately about those who are no longer here, my grandparents mostly, but since I heard Lee had passed I began to wonder all the more.

I have always had a healthy fear of the sea and the idea of what it might be like when one dies is always lingering in the back of my mind, but the way in which the concept of death is explained by J. R. R. Tolkien, in Lord of the Rings, seems to connect death to a calm sea and a distant shore beyond. This most peaceful image of a grey mist, rolling back to reveal a clear glass that is sky and green shores, this has brought great peace to my heart.

Lee died at age ninety-three. He is survived by his wife of many years and their daughter.

Life is meant to be lived and Sir Christopher Lee lived it better than anyone I can think of.

Well played sir (Badass) Lee.

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/christopherlee.html