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Total Eclipse
Aug. 13th, 2018 05:47 pmI expected to enjoy Total Eclipse, as it was directed by Agnieszhka Holland (who directed The Secret Garden) and is about the dysfunctional romance between the French poets Verlaine and Rimbaud.
But in fact I didn’t finish it. Leonardo DiCaprio was bizarrely wooden as Rimbaud: what makes this particularly odd is that when he’s playing Rimbaud pretending to be a dog or a goat, he’s actually quite convincing, but when he’s just delivering normal dialogue he’s flat. This may be intentional - although what it’s intending to show, I don’t know - but mostly the effect is “this is Leonardo DiCaprio pretending to be someone and doing a bad job of it.”
Also, I had not realized just how low my tolerance is for men behaving badly because they are GENIUSES. To be fair the movie doesn’t entirely agree with this point, but Verlaine and Rimbaud clearly believe that their GENIUS means that they can do whatever they want, even if that means setting his wife’s hair on fire (Verlaine) or stealing his host’s stuff if he feels like it (Rimbaud) or stabbing his lover’s hand in a weird demonstration of the principle that if you’re going to be brutal, it’s purer to do it while you’re sober and also insulting to apologize (Rimbaud again, chastising Verlaine for maundering on about how he drunkenly set his wife’s hair on fire).
The hand-stabbing really ought to be in my wheelhouse, but in combination with DiCaprio’s flat delivery it’s just kind of dull and unpleasant. There’s no sense of interiority to his character - no sense of why he’s doing any of this. And without that, what’s the point?
But in fact I didn’t finish it. Leonardo DiCaprio was bizarrely wooden as Rimbaud: what makes this particularly odd is that when he’s playing Rimbaud pretending to be a dog or a goat, he’s actually quite convincing, but when he’s just delivering normal dialogue he’s flat. This may be intentional - although what it’s intending to show, I don’t know - but mostly the effect is “this is Leonardo DiCaprio pretending to be someone and doing a bad job of it.”
Also, I had not realized just how low my tolerance is for men behaving badly because they are GENIUSES. To be fair the movie doesn’t entirely agree with this point, but Verlaine and Rimbaud clearly believe that their GENIUS means that they can do whatever they want, even if that means setting his wife’s hair on fire (Verlaine) or stealing his host’s stuff if he feels like it (Rimbaud) or stabbing his lover’s hand in a weird demonstration of the principle that if you’re going to be brutal, it’s purer to do it while you’re sober and also insulting to apologize (Rimbaud again, chastising Verlaine for maundering on about how he drunkenly set his wife’s hair on fire).
The hand-stabbing really ought to be in my wheelhouse, but in combination with DiCaprio’s flat delivery it’s just kind of dull and unpleasant. There’s no sense of interiority to his character - no sense of why he’s doing any of this. And without that, what’s the point?
