An angel and a fallen angel?
The Hippopotamus (2017) is one of those cranky examples of British humor that can often leave an audience wondering if there’s a point to the hijinks. Ted Wallace is a poet, a poet with a big name, a string of failed marriages, destroyed friendships, a taste for alcohol arguably stronger than his taste for breathing, a job as a theatre reviewer of definite opinion, and a case of writer’s block so powerful he hasn’t published anything in a decade. He’s a cranky old shit.
His job evaporates, and as he celebrates, his goddaughter shows up. She has been diagnosed with leukemia, but claims she’s been miraculously cured – and she hires her godfather to find out how. Is her family home the base for creating miracles?
There’s history here, and not so good of history, but Ted has a positive connection with his godson, David, and he leans on that to cadge a visit. David is a trifle, well, odd. He spends evenings outside, he often disappears, and his family has witnessed him saving people and animals that are near death. Add to that a preoccupation with poetry, but poetry Ted disapproves of, and he’s a bit of a package that you’re not certain you’d sign for.
Ted continues to investigate, digging beneath the surface of a pond opaque to casual investigation. Between old, detested acquaintances, desperate for a miracle, and family members who hesitate to throw either water or oil on the fire, the truth is occulted, but Ted has found a purpose, a drive that drags him, kicking and screaming, out of his private pond of whiskey, and on a quest for truth.
Even as a poet might see it.
But there’s a price to be paid for truth, and it’s enforced through a ruthless Nature – at least in the eyes of his ex-wife. If only he’d kept his mouth shut, she seems to be saying, everything would have been fine. Maybe it was just as well they divorced.
The characters are well drawn, and it’s all a trifle sly and fun. Still, the title is a bit of a puzzle, and without having read the novel, I can only guess that a hippopotamus goes where it will, with little consideration for manners, and that’s Ted in a single line. But is there a theme that draws this all together.
Truth to be told …
