Elegy
Joe and I saw Elegy in Annapolis on Friday. It was hot, we had a few hours to kill before dinner, and neither one of us had read a movie review in months. We took a chance and the movie has been haunting me ever since.
I suppose I look at this movie from one angle as I have never read The Dying Animal (Philip Roth) and therefore can not give the literary film review. I had an ex once who complained about my fascination with Road to Perdition as it was merely a character study which studied one character (in my opinion, two, but that is neither here nor there). He held up as an example Meet Joe Black which he said was an example of a character study of eight people. He was going for quantity, not quality. Elegy is another small-scale character study; we study David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) mostly in his apartment, with a few appearances in his classroom and various locales in New York City. It is a study of how he behaves as he must face the reality that he has outgrown and no longer desires the entanglement-free life he has touted for so long.
The two women in his life exist as foils to his self-discovery. The one (Carolyn/Patricia Clarkson) is a woman of his own generation (approximately) with whom he has enjoyed "hit and run" sex for three decades. The relationship is purposefully meaningless yet with certain unspoken expectations of which Kepesh may not be aware. The other (Conseula/Penelope Cruz) is a former student with whom he falls in love, despite his own perception of the relationship. Consuela is never fully developed as a character and her best moments are when she reflects some key trait of Kepesh. Her character seems full of contradictions; she is a well educated woman who is capable of managing her own affairs yet at the end seems more defined by how others have perceived her than by her actual existence. Kepesh's friend (George O'Hare/Dennis Hopper) reminds him of the invisibility of beautiful women yet Kepesh is incapable of seeing how invisible Consuela is to him until she becomes invisible to herself.
There is no promise in the ending of the film that Kepesh has discovered some long-lost humanity, that he has repaired all his troubled relationships, or that there is a big cathartic moment waiting in the wings. The plot has never denied Kepesh his humanity, only his ability to face it. In the end, that is the central question of the film.
I suppose I look at this movie from one angle as I have never read The Dying Animal (Philip Roth) and therefore can not give the literary film review. I had an ex once who complained about my fascination with Road to Perdition as it was merely a character study which studied one character (in my opinion, two, but that is neither here nor there). He held up as an example Meet Joe Black which he said was an example of a character study of eight people. He was going for quantity, not quality. Elegy is another small-scale character study; we study David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) mostly in his apartment, with a few appearances in his classroom and various locales in New York City. It is a study of how he behaves as he must face the reality that he has outgrown and no longer desires the entanglement-free life he has touted for so long.
The two women in his life exist as foils to his self-discovery. The one (Carolyn/Patricia Clarkson) is a woman of his own generation (approximately) with whom he has enjoyed "hit and run" sex for three decades. The relationship is purposefully meaningless yet with certain unspoken expectations of which Kepesh may not be aware. The other (Conseula/Penelope Cruz) is a former student with whom he falls in love, despite his own perception of the relationship. Consuela is never fully developed as a character and her best moments are when she reflects some key trait of Kepesh. Her character seems full of contradictions; she is a well educated woman who is capable of managing her own affairs yet at the end seems more defined by how others have perceived her than by her actual existence. Kepesh's friend (George O'Hare/Dennis Hopper) reminds him of the invisibility of beautiful women yet Kepesh is incapable of seeing how invisible Consuela is to him until she becomes invisible to herself.
There is no promise in the ending of the film that Kepesh has discovered some long-lost humanity, that he has repaired all his troubled relationships, or that there is a big cathartic moment waiting in the wings. The plot has never denied Kepesh his humanity, only his ability to face it. In the end, that is the central question of the film.