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Review:
 There’s
a joke that goes something like this: A sadist and a masochist are
walking down the street together. The masochist says "hit me" and
the sadist says "no." I repeat this only to make the point that
sadism doesn’t always involve leather, whips and chains.
Sometimes, it has to do with watching movies about people
suffering needlessly.
This is such a film. There is nothing entertaining here. This
is about people in pain. Psychic pain that has really no cause
other then possible mental illness. This is a misogynist and
sadistic film taking perverse pleasure in the pain of the
characters.
Then why is it getting awards and acclaim?
Because it has movie stars doing the best jobs they possibly
can. We’ve got Julianne Moore emoting her brains out, Ed Harris
looking plaintive and pathetic, Nicole Kidman in a false nose
looking nothing like herself. Meryl Streep chews the scenery like
she hasn’t done in years. EVERYONE chews the scenery until there
is nothing left to swallow.
They do a reat job. The direction is perfect, the art direction is
perfect, in fact everything is perfect but the script. This is an
evil film.
The structure is the interspersing of three stories. The first
is that of Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman), who on that day was to
begin her novel "Mrs. Dalloway." She suffered from crippling
depression, and her husband Leonard(Stephen Dillane) was at pains
as to what to do to make her life better. The second takes place
about twenty years later, and a California housewife named Laura
Brown (Julianne Moore ), is on the brink of doing herself in.
She’s reading "Mrs. Dalloway," and this doesn’t really help her
situation. Her husband(John C. Reilly ) and son love her dearly,
and this doesn’t ameliorate things in the least. So she suffers.
Meanwhile, in the early ‘2000s, Clarissa Vaughn(Meryl Streep) is
throwing a party for her unrequited love Richard (Ed Harris), who
as traditional for this kind of thing, is dying of AIDS. She
suffers along with him, but her gay lover Sally (Allison Janney )
doesn’t. as she isn’t enamoured of the fellow.
Isn’t this a hoot? Pain!!! Suffering!!! Attempted suicide! Just
the thing to drive the blues away, folks, see there are people
who’ve got it worse than you, you should be happy and ENJOY the
suffering. That’s entertainment, right?
Wrong. The story is boring. The characters uninteresting. We
want them to get it over with and it’s clear that the writer and
director hate them very much. There are wonderful performances
here, but why watch them if by the end you want to slit your own
throat.
Disgusting!!!
Eric Lurio
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