Les Amants du Pont-Neuf
A bizarre tale of two young people sleeping rough on Pont-Neuf. The box thought it a uniquely unlifting story, I thought it interesting and BH thought it horrid. I can't remember exactly how it ended so I shall have to take it in again when BH is not looking.
In a Better World
Another bizarre tale of a doctor with a day job in some messed up part of Africa and a dodgy family life back in small town Denmark. Maybe not the gut wrenching masterpiece of the puff on the box but certainly worth a look.
The Passion of the Christ
A costume drama dramatising the last day or so of the life of our Lord on this earth.
Rather silly in that most of the dialogue is in some approximation to Aramaic and the rest in some approximation to Latin (medieval church variety). The first of these being what the natives spoke, the latter what the Romans spoke, although according to Wikipedia these Romans would have been more likely to speak Greek (late classical variety). Didn't really matter as there was not that much dialogue and what there was was fairly straightforward.
A lot of violence. I only managed the first half of the film but a good part of that was given over to a graphic re-enactment of a brutal flogging.
A lot of talk about Jesus being the son of God. I suppose this is fair enough if you are a certain sort of trinitarian, but my understanding is that the son of God bit was pasted onto the Jewish origins of our faith, some years after the event, by some Greek johnney-come-lately called Paul and so would not have figured in the Passion, if there ever was one, in quite this way.
Not sure whether I am going to manage the rest of the film and given Mel Gibson's record, understandable that the majors did not take it on - but, sadly, he had the last laugh, recouping his investment of $40m or so ten fold or so. At least I only added modestly to his take, buying second hand and doing no more than propping up the second hand market for the film in a miniscule way. I suppose the popularity of the film is down to all the Bible bashers in the States and all the Catholics the world over, these last being quite into gore. Think of all those flagellation flavoured crucifixes erected in mountain villages in Catholic Savoy. The bloody re-enactments of crucifixions (if not crucifictions) in Central America. Some might argue that all this gore allows us to sublimate that part of ourselves in a safe way, while I just think that it is unseemly.
Fancy web site at http://www.thepassionofchrist.com, but it is no where near as informative as Wikipedia. On the other hand there was various merchandise on offer: a passionate mouse mat perhaps, at just $4.99 a go with a generous discount for confirmation classes?
The Iron Lady
This one we paid a proper price for, King's Lynn being an old fashioned enough sort of place to have an HMV shop. Very quaint.
Meryl Streep - an actress whom I much prefer to our own, in some ways similar, Helen Mirren - doing Mrs. Thatcher's descent into Alzheimers. As a portrait of this process I thought it was very good, with biographical flashbacks providing a bit of light relief. I found the daughter spot on, the husband a bit wrong. A good effort, but not quite right.
However, while I think that much of what Mrs. Thatcher did was very wrong and that close up she may well have been a rather unpleasant person, I do not think it right to portray a person who was alive at the time in this way. A lack of respect for her and a lack of consideration for her family. Whatever we might think of her, we did elect her as our leader for ten years or so and we ought at least to show a bit of respect for the office of leader, if not for her.
Educating us about the dementia which is going to catch a third or so of us is good, but one should not use real & identifiable people for the purpose, although I grant that the message that it can happen to anyone is strengthened thereby. I was not very impressed with the film about Iris Murdoch for the same reason.
No comments:
Post a Comment