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osprey_archer1. It is, I’ve decided, a bad sign if a biopic arranges itself around the conceit of the main character having conversations with a dead person. It worked poorly in The Iron Lady, and it also worked poorly in Creation, a movie about Darwin which is so arranged as to suggest that he regularly held hallucinatory conversations with his dead daughter while he was writing The Origin of Species.
Beyond that, Creation manages to paint a rather unattractive picture of Darwin as a man who so blatantly favored his elder daughter that his other children knew it; who, when he finished his magnum opus, gave it to his deeply religious wife and said, “You decide what to do with it” - knowing, as he must have known, that this would put her in a position where any choice she made would betray her conscience. If she sent it to be published, she would betray her religious convictions; if she destroyed it, she would betray her husband and the work to which he devoted twenty years of his life.
I am hoping that some of this is fictionalized embroidery, because if not, Darwin was kind of a jackass.
2. Ladies in Lavender, a movie about two aging sisters (Judy Dench and Maggie Smith, both of whom I admire enormously) who live on the coast of Cornwall in the late 1930s. They take in a handsome young man whom they found shipwrecked and injured on the beach. He turns out to be a brilliant violinist; a visiting artist tells her brother, an orchestra conductor, of his talent, and the conductor promptly invites the young man to try out for his orchestra. But the sisters intercept the letter and burn it.
O.o
The director: What this movie needs is more equal opportunity creepitude!
An elderly doctor falls for the visiting artist! He parks his car outside her house and stares at her window through binoculars! Then, when it becomes clear that she will never love him back because she loves the shipwrecked violinist, he tells the authorities that the shipwrecked violinist is actually a GERMAN SPY!
o.O
But then the visiting artist and the shipwrecked violinist run away to London together! And the violinist (who is Polish, btw) becomes first violinist in the artist’s brother’s orchestra. So the German spy angle doesn’t end up mattering at all.
This is such a bizarre movie. The coast of Cornwall is very pretty, but the whole plot relies so heavily on Old People Being Creepy, and it’s just unpleasant to watch.
Beyond that, Creation manages to paint a rather unattractive picture of Darwin as a man who so blatantly favored his elder daughter that his other children knew it; who, when he finished his magnum opus, gave it to his deeply religious wife and said, “You decide what to do with it” - knowing, as he must have known, that this would put her in a position where any choice she made would betray her conscience. If she sent it to be published, she would betray her religious convictions; if she destroyed it, she would betray her husband and the work to which he devoted twenty years of his life.
I am hoping that some of this is fictionalized embroidery, because if not, Darwin was kind of a jackass.
2. Ladies in Lavender, a movie about two aging sisters (Judy Dench and Maggie Smith, both of whom I admire enormously) who live on the coast of Cornwall in the late 1930s. They take in a handsome young man whom they found shipwrecked and injured on the beach. He turns out to be a brilliant violinist; a visiting artist tells her brother, an orchestra conductor, of his talent, and the conductor promptly invites the young man to try out for his orchestra. But the sisters intercept the letter and burn it.
O.o
The director: What this movie needs is more equal opportunity creepitude!
An elderly doctor falls for the visiting artist! He parks his car outside her house and stares at her window through binoculars! Then, when it becomes clear that she will never love him back because she loves the shipwrecked violinist, he tells the authorities that the shipwrecked violinist is actually a GERMAN SPY!
o.O
But then the visiting artist and the shipwrecked violinist run away to London together! And the violinist (who is Polish, btw) becomes first violinist in the artist’s brother’s orchestra. So the German spy angle doesn’t end up mattering at all.
This is such a bizarre movie. The coast of Cornwall is very pretty, but the whole plot relies so heavily on Old People Being Creepy, and it’s just unpleasant to watch.
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no subject
Date: 2014-01-13 05:39 pm (UTC)Talking of biopics of scientists, I remember you mentioning you'd watched Kinsey and was going to review that - I would be very interested in your thoughts on that one!
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Date: 2014-01-14 01:07 am (UTC)I did watch Kinsey! I should make a post about Biopics I Watched Two Years Ago, so I can review J. Edgar, too.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-14 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-14 01:08 am (UTC)