Moving Pictures

I’m not sure how much I liked this. Firstly, let’s mention the environment of the story: occupied Paris in WWII, a museum curator vying with a German officer over what happens to the works of art. I’ve kind of read enough WWII stories. Certainly there are aspects of that time that we must never forget, that we must always be vigilant about, but that doesn’t stop me being a bit bored with WWII and Nazis. It’s also kind of an easy option – partly because the iconography is so clear and well-known (though the Immonens completely avoid using that), partly because we all know the result, partly because the Nazis have long been the accepted exemplar for evil. This means we all accept a simpleminded morality, and we’ve all seen countless “Oh look – even they weren’t all entirely bad” devices.

Secondly, if the parallel between protecting works of art and protecting people from the Nazis isn’t obvious to you from the sentences above, the text spells it out for you. It avoids slapping you around the face with it, I guess, but not by so much, and mostly because the book as a whole is understated, working by restrained implication – this is one of the more explicit and unmissable parts.

Thirdly, the implication falls rather short on what seems to be the pivotal event, certainly the thing that prompts the main sequence here (there is plenty of non-chronological material too), revealed in part only at the end, turning on a character who is never seen or named. Now maybe I am being dumb at not deducing the detail of what happened, or maybe the authors wanted us to be unable to decide between various possible interpretations, but I really don’t know what happened, and there are different possibilities that say very different things about the main characters and the story’s outcome.

But despite these things I didn’t like, there was quite a lot I did. The conversations are handled with subtlety and commendable control, in the writing and the art. The art is often striking, in bold black and white (the only grey is on the cover) with very heavy shadow effects, ending up something like a cross between Paul Grist and, more appropriately, Art Spiegelman’s Maus – indeed, the female protagonist kept making me think of his mouse figures. Stuart also handles the architecture and cityscapes with genuine force.

Also, even if the art/people parallel is too categorically explained, it is a resonant one with some depth, especially when the protagonist’s job involves labelling and creating paperwork for art and classifying it, and therefore influencing its fate. Kathryn makes the most of this metaphor. This extends to not discussing morality beyond this one area, although this is rather forced – we are arguably given too little of the main antagonist here, too little to understand his role or actions or the central relationship.

All in all, this is a work worth discussing at greater length than most, and it may be worth noting that Stuart Immonen is best known for drawing Spider-Man and the X-Men, which perhaps shouldn’t make a work of subtlety and ambiguity and ambition more impressive and surprising, but I admit that for me it absolutely does.