You know what they say about wishes?
Mar. 8th, 2012 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThe one advantage if you don't feel passionately about something is that it makes following controversies voyeuristic fun, as opposed to hurtful "but why don't they see....!?!" battle for oneself. My current example is the ongoing reaction to The Iron Lady. (Which I still haven't watched), i.e. the one beyond the "Meryl great, film mediocre" response from both sides of the ideological spectrum. Today's Süddeutsche Zeitung has a fervent Thatcherite named Niles Gardiner being all for the film, with two caveats: a) too much time on Alzheimer, not enough Margareta Triumphans, and b) he wishes that instead of the "the inexperienced Phyllida Llyod, the creator of the musical comedy Mamma Mia" there would have been " Steven Spielberg or David Lean" at hand to direct the epic life of Margaret T.
Dear Mr. Gardiner: be careful what you wish for. I will defend Spielberg's best to the, well, not death, but to the pain, as The Princess Bride would have it, but there's no doubt Our Steven would have somehow managed to make the life of Maggie about the father-son relationship of what's his name, her son (Mark, right?) and the late Denis. As for David Lean, I understand why he's your go to man for visual grandeur, but one would think it hadn't escaped your notice how the late Rajah of the British Film (I think it was Time Magazine who called him that, and I loved it) loved his heroes: neurotic, obsessive, and, by the end of their tale, broken. Well, not all of them - there's a charming movie, Summertime, about Kate Hepburn in Venice where she has a fling with a handsome Italian and at the end is just fine because it's not based on Tennessee Williams - but certainly those you're thinking off. Bridge on the River Kwai? Colonel Nicholson has his stoic and heroic endurance in a cage sequence mid-film. The rest of the time he's busy to help the Japanese build the damn bridge because British Perfectionism Does It Better, which is a tad embarassing when William Holden gets there to blow it up. Lawrence of Arabia? The Lawrence-pulls-off-heroic-stunts-against-the-odds part is over mid-movie as well, and then we get to watch T.E. Lawrence as he goes from There Is No Post To This Traumatic Stress Syndrome after being raped to Even Worse No Post In This Traumatic Stress Syndrome, there's a massacre, his friendships fall apart, and as for the political goal of the film, the free Arabia idea falls apart in a mixture of inner Arabic squabbling and scheming European Imperialism. Now honestly I have no idea what David Lean thought about Margaret Thatcher, or what dramatist Robert Bolt, who was his favourite scriptwriter, thought, though my guess is that since they were both alive in the 80s and most people in the film and theatre were, err, no Friends Of Maggie, to put it mildly... And I'm perfectly willing to believe they'd have made something highly memorable out of her life. But somehow I really, really doubt you'd have liked the result. Visual grandeur not withstanding.
Dear Mr. Gardiner: be careful what you wish for. I will defend Spielberg's best to the, well, not death, but to the pain, as The Princess Bride would have it, but there's no doubt Our Steven would have somehow managed to make the life of Maggie about the father-son relationship of what's his name, her son (Mark, right?) and the late Denis. As for David Lean, I understand why he's your go to man for visual grandeur, but one would think it hadn't escaped your notice how the late Rajah of the British Film (I think it was Time Magazine who called him that, and I loved it) loved his heroes: neurotic, obsessive, and, by the end of their tale, broken. Well, not all of them - there's a charming movie, Summertime, about Kate Hepburn in Venice where she has a fling with a handsome Italian and at the end is just fine because it's not based on Tennessee Williams - but certainly those you're thinking off. Bridge on the River Kwai? Colonel Nicholson has his stoic and heroic endurance in a cage sequence mid-film. The rest of the time he's busy to help the Japanese build the damn bridge because British Perfectionism Does It Better, which is a tad embarassing when William Holden gets there to blow it up. Lawrence of Arabia? The Lawrence-pulls-off-heroic-stunts-against-the-odds part is over mid-movie as well, and then we get to watch T.E. Lawrence as he goes from There Is No Post To This Traumatic Stress Syndrome after being raped to Even Worse No Post In This Traumatic Stress Syndrome, there's a massacre, his friendships fall apart, and as for the political goal of the film, the free Arabia idea falls apart in a mixture of inner Arabic squabbling and scheming European Imperialism. Now honestly I have no idea what David Lean thought about Margaret Thatcher, or what dramatist Robert Bolt, who was his favourite scriptwriter, thought, though my guess is that since they were both alive in the 80s and most people in the film and theatre were, err, no Friends Of Maggie, to put it mildly... And I'm perfectly willing to believe they'd have made something highly memorable out of her life. But somehow I really, really doubt you'd have liked the result. Visual grandeur not withstanding.
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