Narration

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for those who didn't like the narration let me point something out. at the very beginning of the film mirabelle is described in that opening narration that (i'm paraphrasing now) she wanted someone to say she was special and the find someone that would fit her perfectly. this is the key to why she was attracted to both jeremy and ray.

remember she threw away jeremy's number after a horrible date. he didn't treat her special, had no idea of how to treat any woman.

ray, although much older, made her feel special. he went to the trouble of finding her address and sending her an expensive, useless gift that simultaneously demonstrated that when he met her at sak's it was not to buy gloves but to meet her. remember, too, the narration later added that the question she most wanted to ask but could not was 'why me?'. perhaps she was afraid of the answer and leaving it unasked and unanswered let her believe that ray really did understand her for the special person she is.

we all want to believe we're special inside and some women need that affirmation more than most. that's why she was drawn to ray...the money helped, of course, but i imagine the story could have been much the same if he were not. ultimately, of course, she realized she was not that special one for him, at least not enough for him to emotionally commit.

personally, i didn't care for the jeremy character and i think in a year or two they'll split. quirky can only carry you so far.

and that's why we have narration in this film, to provide insight into mirabelle's character that we might not understand otherwise.

Well, I agree w/ ninac4116. In fact, in listening to a lot of director commmentaries on DVD's there's one type of comment I hear a fair amount of the time. Paraphrasing, it's usually the director (sometimes a writer), almost apologizing for the use of narration, saying: "I really don't like using voice-over or narration. I think it reminds the audience they're watching a movie, taking them out of the experience. And if the actors and I have done our jobs, some disembodied voice explaining it all seems contrived, superfluous, redundant."

I remember the writer of "The Beautiful Country" explaining that one the of the seminal producers of that movie - Terrence Malick - hates narration, and how ironic it is that he uses it in much of his film work. But while I think the voice-over completely serves a movie like "Days of Heaven," I can't make that same case here. I thought it didn't just describe Ray's detachment and inability to connect ~ it contributed to my own.



"Live so your friends can defend you, but never have to."

I thought that the narration served to convey to the audience that Ray and Mirabelle were, at times, not being honest with themselves, and at other times, others. Ray's dialogue to his therapist and to Mirabelle tells them and the audience that he is only involved with Mirabelle sexually, but the naration after they are apart reveals his inner truth, that in reality he does feel connected to Mirabelle in a deeper way. It's a truth that we wouldn't get through any other means, because I don't think it's something that Ray is consciously aware of. I was glad to have that insight, so I actually appreciated the narration for this reason.

Oh god, I agree.
"It was then that he surpassed Ray as a lover of Mirabelle."

Steve, I love you, but this writing is absolutely terrible.

I didn't have a problem with the fact that there was narration - my problem was with Steve Martin doing the narration. He can't act visually, let alone convey emotion with just his voice. It would've been so much better if someone else had narrated it.

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