Dandelion's blog

Jump to Comments

The poem:

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire in thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art?
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand, and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Movie: Burning Bright (2010)

I remember I saw this movie in September and I loved it. It’s a thriller centered on a young woman and her autistic little brother who are trapped in a house with a ravenous tiger during a hurricane. I was very impressed. The film kept you in suspense all 86 minutes.

I also remember that when I first saw and listened in class how this poem is declaimed by Alan Bates, I felt I had a déjà vu. And actually after reading some reviews of this movie I realised that I wasn’t wrong. I will put here two excerpts of 2 reviews on this movie:

“The most disappointing aspect of this release is the skimpy slate of extras accompanying it. We start things off with a Special Introduction by Briana Evigan (1:09). Don’t let the special-ness of the introduction fool you. This is just Evigan reading The Tyger by William Blake. It’s a nice touch since the film gets its name from the poem but it sure doesn’t count as an introduction in my book. This is followed by the only truly informative extra. The featurette Forces of Nature (10:25) may be brief but it covers a lot of ground. We get to hear from Brooks and VFX supervisor Dan Schmit about the challenges of using practical effects and clever editing to create suspenseful showdowns when the cast and the cats were never in the same room at the same time. Speaking of cats, we also hear from the film’s tiger trainer about using 3 different tigers to play 1 killer feline. Evigan also shows up to talk about the system she developed with Brooks regarding the appropriate level of intensity to display in different scenes. The disc closes things out with trailers for other films Also from Lionsgate.”

Source

“On paper, Burning Bright must have one of the most ridiculous scenarios in the history of mainstream cinema. How a film about two siblings boarded up in a house with a tiger during a tornado ever got beyond the ‘stoned at home reading William Blake’ stage (the film is titled after one of his most famous poems), we’ll never know. But thank God it did because Carlos Brooks’ tale of woman vs beast is a surprisingly enjoyable, serviceable and thoughtful thriller.”

Source