Painted Veil and Pan's
Hey everyone! Last weekend I saw two more good movies I can happily recommend:
Pan's Labryinth - Pan's is currently in running for the Best Foreign Language pic at the upcoming Oscars. And though I have yet to see any of the other contenders, it's hard to imagine a more original film in this category (I do hear truly fabulous things about The Lives of Others, but it has yet to grace my local cineplex). Pan's is set in mid 1940's Spain and tells the story of a young girl, Ofelia, and her pregnant mother who move to the countryside to live with her new stepfather, Capitan Vidal, one of Franco's henchmen. This guy is a sadistic monster, so Ofelia chooses to escape from her reality by imagining a fantasy world. Unfortunately for Ofelia, even her fantasy world is a dark and disturbing place, full of hideous creatures. The movie has two parallel stories going on. One is set in Ofelia's fantasy world, and the other is in the real world where a group of rebel's are in conflict with the militia led by Capitan Vidal. On the side of the rebels is the Capitan's maid, Mercedes, who becomes Ofelia's ally. Both storylines are equally compelling, and the visuals in the fantasy storyline are especially creative. It got distracting reading the subtitles during these scenes because I was so interested in what was going on onscreen. In the end, Pan's is a very dark, graphic and sad movie. The first of the year that made me cry. Not one for kids, but definitely one for adults.
The Painted Veil - The Painted Veil is based on the William Somerset Maugham novel that I have not read. It focuses on the lives of ill-matched English married couple Kitty and Walter Fein, played by Naomi Watts and Edward Norton in the 1920s. Norton is a bacteriologist stationed in Shanghai. Thanks to a brief affair with the British Vice Consul (Liev Schreiber), Walter decides to punish Kitty by dragging her to an isolated village to help with a cholera outbreak. He actually tells her she has a choice: she can do this or he will divorce her. I have to say, I would have chosen divorce, given the extremely horrific conditions of the cholera-beset village. I started off the movie not at all blaming Kitty for her liaison, so wooden was Walter. The movie succeeds in turning this view on its head as the two battle wits and eventually come to see the good in each other. By the end, Walter and Kitty had both won me over thanks to excellent performances by Watts and Norton. I understand the book's ending is quite different from the movie's, but I found it very pleasing and ultimately romantic (though once again sad) nonetheless. This felt like a movie that should have been made a few decades ago - and I mean that as a compliment. Not enough movies like this are made anymore. Related gossip of the day: Current Hollywood couple Naomi Watts and Liev Scheiber got together on this movie. They've been together a year and Watts is rumored to be pregnant.
Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: I'm already against the next war.
-sunday
Pan's Labryinth - Pan's is currently in running for the Best Foreign Language pic at the upcoming Oscars. And though I have yet to see any of the other contenders, it's hard to imagine a more original film in this category (I do hear truly fabulous things about The Lives of Others, but it has yet to grace my local cineplex). Pan's is set in mid 1940's Spain and tells the story of a young girl, Ofelia, and her pregnant mother who move to the countryside to live with her new stepfather, Capitan Vidal, one of Franco's henchmen. This guy is a sadistic monster, so Ofelia chooses to escape from her reality by imagining a fantasy world. Unfortunately for Ofelia, even her fantasy world is a dark and disturbing place, full of hideous creatures. The movie has two parallel stories going on. One is set in Ofelia's fantasy world, and the other is in the real world where a group of rebel's are in conflict with the militia led by Capitan Vidal. On the side of the rebels is the Capitan's maid, Mercedes, who becomes Ofelia's ally. Both storylines are equally compelling, and the visuals in the fantasy storyline are especially creative. It got distracting reading the subtitles during these scenes because I was so interested in what was going on onscreen. In the end, Pan's is a very dark, graphic and sad movie. The first of the year that made me cry. Not one for kids, but definitely one for adults.
The Painted Veil - The Painted Veil is based on the William Somerset Maugham novel that I have not read. It focuses on the lives of ill-matched English married couple Kitty and Walter Fein, played by Naomi Watts and Edward Norton in the 1920s. Norton is a bacteriologist stationed in Shanghai. Thanks to a brief affair with the British Vice Consul (Liev Schreiber), Walter decides to punish Kitty by dragging her to an isolated village to help with a cholera outbreak. He actually tells her she has a choice: she can do this or he will divorce her. I have to say, I would have chosen divorce, given the extremely horrific conditions of the cholera-beset village. I started off the movie not at all blaming Kitty for her liaison, so wooden was Walter. The movie succeeds in turning this view on its head as the two battle wits and eventually come to see the good in each other. By the end, Walter and Kitty had both won me over thanks to excellent performances by Watts and Norton. I understand the book's ending is quite different from the movie's, but I found it very pleasing and ultimately romantic (though once again sad) nonetheless. This felt like a movie that should have been made a few decades ago - and I mean that as a compliment. Not enough movies like this are made anymore. Related gossip of the day: Current Hollywood couple Naomi Watts and Liev Scheiber got together on this movie. They've been together a year and Watts is rumored to be pregnant.
Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: I'm already against the next war.
-sunday
posted by Sunday at
3:37 PM
1 Comments:
we have to understand that in those days, ie the 20s, divorce (by the husband) was definitely the least preferable choice for a woman according to general perceptions of society.
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Anonymous, at 2/10/2007 5:44 AM
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