Well I know it's only three weeks in, but it seems Oscar and I have had our first fight and in front of my parents too. Ohh the humiliation. We kinda made up, but things are definitely still not the same.
First off, it seems that he is not making himself completely available to me. What do I mean by this? I have had extreme difficulty getting The Coalminer's Daughter (circa 1980). This has seriously hindered my ability to get to know him as we cannot move forward until I am able to watch ALL films nominated for Best Film in the Academy Awards of 1980. Point one against Oscar!
Point two...... Tess!!!!!!! What a woeful film, if I've ever seen one. Absolutely, unequivocably, wholeheartedly, absolutely the most horrendous film. I'm sorry, but what was the Academy thinking? Worse still, my parents were up visiting for the weekend with Tim and I. When I told them of my plans for the next twelve months, my Dad being kind of a movie buff, was intrigued and offered to meet with Oscar. So we turned on Roman Polanski's, Tess. Our thoughts? See the review below!
Tess (1980)
Starring: Nastassja Kinski, John Collin, Peter Firth, Rosemary Martin
Director: Roman Palanski
So, this movie is about a self-pitying, passive and drab girl called Tess and is set in England in the 1800s. She is the daughter of an alcoholic farmer called Durbeyfield. Some how (honsestly the first 45 minutes, actually make that the whole film, I had trouble keeping up with what the heck was going on) the father finds out he has descended from the aristocracy, and more specifically the d'Urberville family. He sends Tess to check out a family living nearby, who share the same surname, and the son of this family (Alec) becomes obsessed with her. He forces himself on her, she runs away on a horse and carriage, then suddenly she is working on a farm. The camera pans to a shot of of a lady holding a baby, who she suddenly hands to Tess and she starts breast feeding the child (we can assume at this point that she had a baby and we are now viewing the future). Then suddenly, we cut to a scene of the family home, where a minister knocks on the door, asking to be let in "to bless the baby". Tess' father gets mad and refuses. Suddenly, it cuts to a scene of Tess approaching the minister, asking him for a "Christian burial" (Dad and I were looking at each other with utter confusion at this point, but we assumed the baby died, which it turned out we were right). He refused, so she became slightly emotive at this point and raised her voice beyond a whisper to say "I'll never come to your church again" (wow I really felt that, great directing Roman). Then suddenly, the scene cuts to Tess on a dairy farm, blah blah blah, she meets another man, Angel, doesn't tell him about the bastard child, they get married, he finds out, sends her back to her family but tells her to pretend they are still married for "appearances", the family become homeless because no body is working, she goes back to "raper" man, Angel comes back, she kills raper and then she is hung.
Actually when I was writing this I thought, this sounds like a compelling story, but it just was not presented well. Let's start with the character of Tess. Again, like our female lead in Raging Bull, she was very very passive. Even though eventually, she overpowers the man who was the reason for all her misery by killing him, it didn't seem like the action of a strong person. Rather it seemed like the action of a weak person, who is both not strong enough to reject a man who treated her so badly (Angel comes back and asks for her forgiveness after an unspecified period of time, which is when she kills Alec) and who also allowed herself to get into the position of misery in the first place. She was just so accepting of whatever happened to her and didn't seem to fight any of it. She allowed herself to be in a vulnerable position with Alec, which resulted in an unwanted pregnancy, she accepted Angel dumping her without any objections, even in the final scene when her and Angel are trying to escape the authorities, they make their way to Stone Henge, and whilst Angel was compelling her to continue running, she just gave up and accepted that she would be caught and hung. Hello, you're in Europe Tess, cross the border into another country, you will never be caught. I'm pretty sure there was no "boat people" or "assylum seekers" in 1800-and-whatever and there was certainly no widely broad cast "most wanted list". There was no internet, phones or television for her "mug shot" to be circulated through. She could have gotten away.
More than the female protagonist letting this film down, was the cinemotography. Dad and I just couldn't keep up. Scenes would jump around everywhere, with no evident links between the two, so you were guessing the whole time what was happening. Although chronological, time was not presented in a logical way. Scenes would jump from one to the other, the one before feeling unfinished and the new one being unclear because there was no obvious link with the one previous. Overall it was confused and boring. Characters were quite unemotive, the muscial compositions were quite drab and did not invoke strong emotional reactions (think Indiana Jones, Titanic and Star Wars - the music in these films were almost as memorable as the movies themselves), even the costumes were quite bland (think Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth, Braveheart - all based on even earlier time periods in the Unite Kingdom then Tess, and the costumes are amazing).
All in all, highly disappointing.
2/10
MOVIE OF THE WEEK
Atlantic City (1981)
Starring: Susan Sarandon, Burt Lancaster and Kate Reid
Director: Louis Malle
This film is what saved my relationship with Oscar. Although, in my opinion not a great movie, it was certainly a step up from Tess. It is about a group of people, some how linked to the underworld of Atlantic City. The main character, Sally has relocated there from Vegas to become a dealer on the tables. This hobo looking couple rolls into town, who we later find out is Sally's sister and husband (Sally's husband left her to run off with her sister, who is an extreme hippie). They come into town because they have no money and need a place to stay, so they approach Sally. Meanwhile, in Sally's building lives Lou. He is a small time criminal, who likes to look at her through the window, pouring lemon all over her body (she works in the seafood buffet at a casino and puts lemon all over her to get rid of the fish smell). Lou lives with an elderly woman, Grace, who is the widow of a criminal acquintance of his and is very demanding, demeaning and bitter. Sally's ex-husband is pointed in the direction of Lou, to sell drugs that he stole from the Mafia. They kill him and Lou continues to sell the stash to a regular buyer. The Mafia finds out that Lou has their drugs and comes after Lou and Sally (by this point Lou has persued Sally and they have had a one night stand). Lou shoots the two goons in a struggle, he and Sally run off, Sally decides to flee abroad where she can persue her dream of becoming a casino dealer and Lou returns home to Atlantic City, where he and Grace sell the remainder of the stash.
Story not the best, pretty standard, but can see it would have been original in its time. The relationship between Grace and Sally's sister, Chrissie, is quite endearing and enjoyable. Here you have a tough, old battle axe and this soft, whimsical hippie, who come together and definitely make for a good laugh.
All in all, not a bad film. I'm yet to see a really bad film with Susan in it.
5/10
Until next week, "good morning, and if I don't see you again, good afternoon, good evening and good night" (Truman Burbank, The Truman Show)
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