Posted in 9b-2010 Reviews, England, Italy on Jan 12th, 2011
When Isabel Archer, a bright and independent young American, makes her first trip to Europe in the company of her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, who lives outside of London in a 400-year-old estate, she discovers a totally different world, one which does not encourage her independent thinking or behavior and which is governed by rigid social codes. This contrast between American and European values, vividly dramatized here, is a consistent theme in James’s novels, one based on his own experiences living in the US and England. In prose that is filled with rich observations about places, customs, and attitudes, James portrays Isabel’s European coming-of-age, as she discovers that she must curb her intellect and independence if she is to fit into the social scheme in which she now finds herself. Isabel Archer, one of James’s most fully drawn characters, has postponed a marriage in America for a year of travel abroad, only to discover upon her precipitate and ill-considered marriage to an American living in Florence, that it is her need to be independent that makes her marriage a disaster. (To see the full review, click on the title of this excerpt.)
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One of the most seductive of all ghost stories, Turn of the Screw is not a tale for young people inured to Halloween I and II or Tales from the Crypt. It is a sophisticated and subtle literary exercise in which the author creates a dense, suggestive, and highly ambiguous story, its suspense and horror generated primarily by what the author does NOT say and does not describe. Compelled to fill in the blanks from his/her own store of personal fears, the reader ultimately conjures up a more horrifying set of images and circumstances than anything an author could impose from without. Written in 1898, this is superficially the tale of a governess who accepts the job of teaching two beautiful, young children whose uncle-guardian wants nothing to do with them. On a symbolic level, however, it is a study of the mores and prejudices of the times and, ultimately, of the nature of Evil.
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Posted in 9b-2010 Reviews, England, Italy on Jan 12th, 2011
Screenwriter Hossein Amini has abandoned the dense prose and convoluted syntax of Henry James’s most complex and difficult novel and created instead a fresh, emotionally nuanced, and psychologically astute script, nominated for an Academy Award. With a remarkable cast, breathtaking cinematography (Eduardo Serra), and a soft background score filled with strings, harp, and piano (Edward Shearmur), Director Iain Softley has created a magnificent film that succeeds in being emotionally affecting, intellectually stimulating, and aesthetically rewarding, a film in which every element contributes to a satisfying whole. Remaining true to the story of James’s novel, the film introduces Kate Croy (Helena Bonham Carter) as the beautiful but impoverished niece of a wealthy socialite (Charlotte Rampling), bent upon finding her a husband of means, but Kate must sever ties with her opium-addicted father and end her relationship with Merton Densher (Linus Roache), a penniless journalist.
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The cruelties of life, both deliberate and accidental, play out with delicious irony in this very dark precursor to the modern noir novel. An elderly brother and his three aging sisters, all physically and emotionally maimed, are required, under the terms of their mother’s will, to share the rapidly deteriorating family estate, Durraghglass, near Cork, Ireland. Each of the Swift family members, firmly controlled by “Mummie” and her memory, leads an almost totally isolated, secret-filled life, unable to share feelings or care for anyone else. Their already precarious lives are tested with the unexpected arrival of Leda, a formerly glamorous, half-Jewish cousin from Austria, whom they all thought “perished in some cold, unnamed camp, most likely. Who wants sordid details?” Irony builds upon irony as Leda’s actions and remarks, often misunderstood, succeed in turning one sibling against another.
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Thomas Keneally’s Booker Prize-winning, fictionalized biography of Oskar Schindler memorializes a member of the Nazi party who endangered his own life for four years, working privately to save Jews from the death camps. A playboy who loved fine wines and foods, he was also a smooth-talking manipulator (and briber) of Nazi officials, as well as a clever entrepreneur, already on his way to stunning financial success by the early days of World War II. Nowhere in Schindler’s background are there any hints that he would one day become the savior of eleven hundred Jewish men and women. While the excellent film of this novel concentrates on the dangers Schindler and “his Jews” faced daily throughout the war, Keneally, well known for his depictions of characters acting under stress, concentrates on the character of Oskar Schindler himself, beginning with his childhood and teen years. As he explores Schindler’s transformation from war profiteer and “passive” Nazi to a man willing to use his fortune to ensure the salvation of his factory workers, Keneally reveals a man of enormous courage and derring-do, a man who thrives by living on the edge. (To see the full review, click on the title of this excerpt)
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