They're Real, Not Cardboard
Finished watching Middlemarch... Feel compelled to finish the book that I barely started reading, though I'm no less sure of finishing it once I begin it again. It seems that maybe I judge the characters too much rather than observe them and their movements. Perhaps it's something I do with people as well, and need to check that too. I find that I like the subjects of the story and the comments it makes at times without always liking the individuals used in the telling. That seems realistic to me. That no one likes all parts of a person, including themlseves. We all have our flaws. We may like someone, but not all parts of them. It's only that you accept the flaws as part of the whole and choose to see past them. I suppose I'm in the midst of considering how much I want to accept particular characters with their flaws. Dorothea... What can I make of you? I need to return to the book and reassess all of this. Though the production was relatively pretty and well done, I want to know what it is that I do not know.
Maurice was a film I hadn't really expected to think much of. I had heard some silly comments about it, not about subject matter, but about the scenes themselves. I liked it, the same way I like most other Ivory or Merchant Ivory films. They're quiet productions that somehow look lush. I should re-read some of Forster. It's been a very long time since I read A Room With A Wiew, and I don't think I really understood it when I *did* read it. I was far too young to understand. Most happily what sticks with me from the film is the point of honesty. Men figuring out how to live as who they are without denials or excuses. People realizing that differences made into societal walls don't matter if you're willing to brave the bricks thrown. Aside from that, I also liked the richness of the film in color and textures. The featurette disc was good as well, and am glad I watched it. The acting was good, good enough that I thought more about the story than anything else. That doesn't mean it was great, but I do think it was good. Watching it, it was hard to believe it was filmed in 1987, it seemed more recent somehow.
Am slightly further along in Gatsby... I will say one thing for Fitzgerald, I like his prose much better now than I did at 16. Cannot say that I like his characters any better, I don't think that I do. However, at times his phrasing can be brilliant. Every now and then I'll re-read a sentence and just marvel at what it has done. It's not like re-reading a Morrison sentence, where you feel the words were poetry and you desire to feel them again. It's more like engineering or architecture, a marvel you want to look at again, to see how it created such a sound and airy space. It does make me wonder though, why it is that so many people seem to think the "Great American Novel" (or even Novelist) needs to have short staccato sentences ala some of Fitzgerald or Hemingway. I am living proof that people here ramble on as elsewhere in the world. Succinctness has its value, no doubt, but there are many good American authors that don't write like that. I refuse to think that "great" American lit only looks like that. I hope these days, with the Morrisons of the world, this is becoming less of an issue. For that I would be glad.
Maurice was a film I hadn't really expected to think much of. I had heard some silly comments about it, not about subject matter, but about the scenes themselves. I liked it, the same way I like most other Ivory or Merchant Ivory films. They're quiet productions that somehow look lush. I should re-read some of Forster. It's been a very long time since I read A Room With A Wiew, and I don't think I really understood it when I *did* read it. I was far too young to understand. Most happily what sticks with me from the film is the point of honesty. Men figuring out how to live as who they are without denials or excuses. People realizing that differences made into societal walls don't matter if you're willing to brave the bricks thrown. Aside from that, I also liked the richness of the film in color and textures. The featurette disc was good as well, and am glad I watched it. The acting was good, good enough that I thought more about the story than anything else. That doesn't mean it was great, but I do think it was good. Watching it, it was hard to believe it was filmed in 1987, it seemed more recent somehow.
Am slightly further along in Gatsby... I will say one thing for Fitzgerald, I like his prose much better now than I did at 16. Cannot say that I like his characters any better, I don't think that I do. However, at times his phrasing can be brilliant. Every now and then I'll re-read a sentence and just marvel at what it has done. It's not like re-reading a Morrison sentence, where you feel the words were poetry and you desire to feel them again. It's more like engineering or architecture, a marvel you want to look at again, to see how it created such a sound and airy space. It does make me wonder though, why it is that so many people seem to think the "Great American Novel" (or even Novelist) needs to have short staccato sentences ala some of Fitzgerald or Hemingway. I am living proof that people here ramble on as elsewhere in the world. Succinctness has its value, no doubt, but there are many good American authors that don't write like that. I refuse to think that "great" American lit only looks like that. I hope these days, with the Morrisons of the world, this is becoming less of an issue. For that I would be glad.