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Just requested it from the library based on your write-up. Sounds like a lot of fun! Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen any of Christopher Lloyd's dramatic work outside of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest unless Judge Doom counts, so looking forward to him in it. It's probably overlooked despite the pedigree because it was a TV (HBO) movie, and those tend to fall through the cracks relatively often, even with things like Roots and Brian's Song widely remembered and highly regarded.
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Jul 5, 2014 22:15
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Got around to watching it this morning after picking it up from the library last week. I was surprised at how funny it was (however darkly,) and for how long, which was of course part of the point in getting into Vivian's mindset. The audience is her co-conspirator for much of the runtime, and Emma Thompson (among many other brilliant acting moments) is great at subtle Bugs Bunny-esque "can you believe this poo poo?" glances. Up until "These are my last coherent lines," where the fourth wall goes up for good, anyway, and the action then charges forward to the ultimate indignity. mind the walrus posted:I just watched this and there are so many wonderful cinematic touches that make this distinct from a stageplay version. The two examples that immediately jumped out at me on a first viewing were the scene where ... she glances into the corner of her room and the camera shows a black television hanging from the ceiling. She then looks away disgusted. It's a perfect quick visual metaphor for both the looming spectre of death as well as a symbol of the sort of base simplicity and vulgarity she's been avoiding during her treatment and is about to indulge in. Yeah, that was a great moment. The use of closeups at the very beginning is another cinematic exclusive. In addition to being an attention grabber it establishes the two doctors (M.D. and Ph.D) as intellectual equals, with a matching bit of dialog. However, there's a subtle difference with their eyelines, and in fact their eyes, with Dr. Kelekian's being narrow, dark, and aimed downward at Vivian, with accompanying head tilt. Vivian stares straighter into the camera, slightly up, on the reverse, with wide and light eyes. She signs the consent form and soon informs us she wished she'd done differently. Intellectual match though she may be, it has no influence on her position in the patient-doctor relationship. quote:I read a copy of the play given to me by a high school Shakespeare teacher quote:"This guy Donne makes Shakespeare look like a Hallmark card writer." That goes nicely with your example. Really the whole scene with her former professor signifies most of the themes. Discount Viscount fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 00:47
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An interesting article which makes a nice companion to this film is Barbara Ehrenreich's "Welcome to Cancerland," from Harper's in 2001 and which I had to read for my basic college writing class a year or so later. It's a critique of the culture surrounding breast cancer and "awareness" and the infantilization of female patients, based on her own experiences, and in some respects could be a refutation of some of what's presented in Wit. I say "could be" because the scene I singled out in my last post really triggered that article in my mind, even though I've not read it since that class. The whole thing where reading a children's book seems to be the comforting/right thing to do, and connecting it with her own childhood rather flirts with falling afoul of that idea. But the two may not totally run at cross purposes. I'm not certain. It does make me wonder whether the play/movie would be at all similar with the main role being male, and where it might differ.
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Jul 17, 2014 07:50
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