Movie "review": Wit
Jun. 26th, 2010 01:09 amWit (2001)
aka The Perfect Storm of Elements Combining to Make Me Bawl Like a Child for Half an Hour.
First there's the play itself, which, when I read it a couple years ago, knocked me utterly breathless. It is, in short, about Vivian Bearing, an English professor--a Donne scholar--in the last stages of ovarian cancer. She faces her own death as analytically as she has her life, using the lens of the comma--not semicolon--dividing life and death at the end of "Death be not proud." She finds, as the play continues, that metaphysical wit is not enough armor for this challenge, and comes to rely on the compassion of her nurse, Susie.
Of the metaphysical poets, I've always found Donne the most affecting. Even if you don't like him, the things Edson does with his verse and the abstract versus the concrete are just incredible, and I can't recommend the play enough. It's a wonderful treatment of what literature can do for us--and what it ultimately cannot.
So there's that. I went into this figuring no matter what they did, I was going to wind up sniffling for a while, because it's this text. Then the movie added Emma Thompson, among other extremely good actors, and I thought, "Oh, dear."
And then they added Arvo Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel." And I realized I was not going to make it through this movie without a box of kleenex.
AND THEN THEY ADDED THE SECOND MOVEMENT OF GORECKI'S SYMPHONY NO. 3. BECAUSE THEY REALLY WANTED ME TO SUFFER. It took, literally, two notes for me to a.) recognize it, and b.) start wibbling. Yeah, so, modern Eastern European composers kind of have a lock on my emotions, 'cause their compositions make anguish concrete. If there is a sadder piece of music in this world than this symphony, I don't want to know about it, because I truly don't think I could handle it.
The filmmakers liked to tease the audience with both pieces of music, using them in bits and pieces, exquisitely, but also knowing when no background music would be just as exquisite. (Scene with Vivian, Susie, and the popsicles, I'm looking at you.) And then...and then there was the scene where they used all eleven-odd minutes of "Spiegel." It's the one where Vivian's old professor, E.M. Ashford, comes to visit her, almost purely by chance, while Vivian is perhaps a day or two from death and in considerable pain. She has, by this point, realized that while Donne is fascinating and even comforting in the abstract, death is an altogether too tangible reality for poetry. She's lost pretty much all power of speech, but somehow seems to communicate this to Ashford when she asks if Vivian would like her to recite something. Instead, she reads a book she was taking to her great-grandson, The Runaway Bunny. And you know, I'm sure what was happening on screen was beautiful and powerful, and each of them had perfect facial expressions, and the camera work continued to be as magnificent as it had been all through the movie. I saw practically none of it, because by the time Ashford read, "'If you become a fish in a trout stream,' said his mother, 'I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you,'" and called it "a little allegory of the soul--wherever it hides, God will find it," I was curled in a ball wondering if one box of kleenex would be enough to see out the end of the film.*
So in lieu of anything actually intelligent to say about the movie, I give you all of the above. I also give you the recommendation that it is, I think, the most affecting--and, for values of "best" where it is equal to "most affecting," best--movie I've seen in ten years. I also give you the following quotes, one which made me cackle, and one which, well, you know what I probably did by now.
"Wasn't that [grand doctors round] grand? Full of subservience, hierarchies, gratuitous displays, sublimated rivalries...I feel completely at home. It is just like a graduate seminar."
"You cannot imagine how time...can be...so...still. It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce."
* You can watch the scene here. Obviously, I recommend tissues.
aka The Perfect Storm of Elements Combining to Make Me Bawl Like a Child for Half an Hour.
First there's the play itself, which, when I read it a couple years ago, knocked me utterly breathless. It is, in short, about Vivian Bearing, an English professor--a Donne scholar--in the last stages of ovarian cancer. She faces her own death as analytically as she has her life, using the lens of the comma--not semicolon--dividing life and death at the end of "Death be not proud." She finds, as the play continues, that metaphysical wit is not enough armor for this challenge, and comes to rely on the compassion of her nurse, Susie.
Of the metaphysical poets, I've always found Donne the most affecting. Even if you don't like him, the things Edson does with his verse and the abstract versus the concrete are just incredible, and I can't recommend the play enough. It's a wonderful treatment of what literature can do for us--and what it ultimately cannot.
So there's that. I went into this figuring no matter what they did, I was going to wind up sniffling for a while, because it's this text. Then the movie added Emma Thompson, among other extremely good actors, and I thought, "Oh, dear."
And then they added Arvo Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel." And I realized I was not going to make it through this movie without a box of kleenex.
AND THEN THEY ADDED THE SECOND MOVEMENT OF GORECKI'S SYMPHONY NO. 3. BECAUSE THEY REALLY WANTED ME TO SUFFER. It took, literally, two notes for me to a.) recognize it, and b.) start wibbling. Yeah, so, modern Eastern European composers kind of have a lock on my emotions, 'cause their compositions make anguish concrete. If there is a sadder piece of music in this world than this symphony, I don't want to know about it, because I truly don't think I could handle it.
The filmmakers liked to tease the audience with both pieces of music, using them in bits and pieces, exquisitely, but also knowing when no background music would be just as exquisite. (Scene with Vivian, Susie, and the popsicles, I'm looking at you.) And then...and then there was the scene where they used all eleven-odd minutes of "Spiegel." It's the one where Vivian's old professor, E.M. Ashford, comes to visit her, almost purely by chance, while Vivian is perhaps a day or two from death and in considerable pain. She has, by this point, realized that while Donne is fascinating and even comforting in the abstract, death is an altogether too tangible reality for poetry. She's lost pretty much all power of speech, but somehow seems to communicate this to Ashford when she asks if Vivian would like her to recite something. Instead, she reads a book she was taking to her great-grandson, The Runaway Bunny. And you know, I'm sure what was happening on screen was beautiful and powerful, and each of them had perfect facial expressions, and the camera work continued to be as magnificent as it had been all through the movie. I saw practically none of it, because by the time Ashford read, "'If you become a fish in a trout stream,' said his mother, 'I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you,'" and called it "a little allegory of the soul--wherever it hides, God will find it," I was curled in a ball wondering if one box of kleenex would be enough to see out the end of the film.*
So in lieu of anything actually intelligent to say about the movie, I give you all of the above. I also give you the recommendation that it is, I think, the most affecting--and, for values of "best" where it is equal to "most affecting," best--movie I've seen in ten years. I also give you the following quotes, one which made me cackle, and one which, well, you know what I probably did by now.
"Wasn't that [grand doctors round] grand? Full of subservience, hierarchies, gratuitous displays, sublimated rivalries...I feel completely at home. It is just like a graduate seminar."
"You cannot imagine how time...can be...so...still. It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce."
* You can watch the scene here. Obviously, I recommend tissues.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}