MovieChat Forums > angelosdaughter > Replies
angelosdaughter's Replies
J thought so, too, until I had read 'Tulip Fever'. I had read 'Girl' and seen the film made from it. I have just watched the film made from 'Tulip Fever.'
It is similar in externals: setting, painting, female protagonists to 'Girl', but only in externals.
'Tulip' is a fictional love story affected by the tulip mania that occurred in the 17th century Netherlands. As shown in the film fortunes were made and ruined by it. Painting is incidental to the story in 'Tulip" 'Tulip is the more somber.
'Girl' is the fictional backstory to a real painting by Johannes Vermeer, a Dutch painter who actually existed. The time period of 'Girl' is set around 29 years after the Tulip market collapsed in 1637. Vermeer painted 'Girl" in 1666.
In both cases the female protagonist at the end takes control of her fate: one because she makes a choice, the other because she has only one choice.
I know this is an old post, so I don't know if anyone will see this, but 'Burnt Offerings' with Karen Black was terrifying: the story of an evil house that draws in its victims and after destroying them, changes its appearance to draw in the next unsuspecting family. There is an elderly relative upstairs that the owners of the house tell Ms. Black she is to attend, but whom no one ever sees. Bette Davis is in it as the grandmother, frightened by a horrifying hearse attendant that she keeps seeing.
I was there in 1987 when the Sistine Chapel ceiling was half cleaned. The difference between the cleaned and still-uncleaned sides was amazing. The cleaned side was so fresh and the colors looked as though they had just been painted. On the other side centuries of candle and incense smoke had taken a toll. I felt fortunate to have seen the constrast.
Jerry Ohrbach had been fighting prostate cancer for about 10 years. It worsened over time. The public was not informed until two weeks before his passing. He had left L&W for a role on Law and Order Trial by Jury, so he wouldn't have such a heavy workload, but only played in two episodes before dying of that cancer.
cont..Back then in that place, men did the fighting for the survival of their families and the power of their clans. Whether by hunting and providing or in battle to protect their property and its inhabitants, their lives were on the line. The system only worked if everyone knew and kept to their place in the system, accepting the authority of the leaders.
Claire, realizing that Jamie was relating the occurrences of his whippings at the hands of his father was explaining that he, too had to bear the punishment that he would reluctantly have to inflict on her to drive home the lesson that she had to accept his authority for him to ensure her safety AND keep his life if that were possible. Her leaving the place he had told her to stay put them both at risk,and he might have died in rescuing her as he had pledged. As she says, after hearing his stories, "I couldn't help but admire the job he had done. Without one word of direct explanation or apology, he had given me the message he intended. I gave you justice , it said, as I was taught it. And I gave you mercy, too, as far as I could. While I could not spare you pain and humiliation, I make you a gift of my own pains and humiliations, that yours might be easier to bear."
She accepts the whipping which, of course, few of us modern women would ever accept, but afterwards while pretending to submissiveness, Claire draws her dagger and presses it against his chest, telling him that if he ever again raises a hand to her she'll 'cut his heart out and fry it for breakfast', whereupon Jamie asks for her dagger upon which he takes an oath that under pain of having his heart cut out, he swears by Jesus Christ and the 'holy iron' (dagger )that he will not raise his hand to her in 'rebellion or in anger'. Jamie, bless him, takes his oaths very seriously, although later on, he half-humorously says that there are times that he regrets taking this one. He, perhaps being so young and relatively naive, is open to some of Claire's anachronistic ways, as they are applicable to his times, accepting also that she is from 200 years in the future, and has knowledge that is ahead of his time.
Claire, on her side, cannot help being a know-it-all. She DOES know so much more than the inhabitants of the 18th century, and, as a nurse, frustrated at the lack of medical knowledge does as much as she can using her superior knowledge of herbals and physiology to remedy what suffering she can. She does have to learn to rein in much of her knowledge as proven by the incident where she is unwittingly arrested as a suspected witch because she happened to be at the home of Geillis Duncan who was under suspicion, and claimed to be one but also had a similar secret to Claire's.
Learning to live in a backward time is a constant challenge to Claire, and she makes a lot of blunders, causing peril to herself and those who care about her, but she is brave, doesn't shrink from danger, tries to do what she can to relieve suffering, and learns in time to read the people around her and try to act accordingly. And Claire does come to prefer the times and people of Jamie, the man she comes to love.
Think of all of the people in our own time who have a problem seeing issues through the lens of another time. There are so many things that weren't even an issue then; people just accepted that things were the way they were in a time when it was a struggle just to survive. Claire is a modern person suddenly thrown back into a time and place 200 years ago. She is disoriented for a time just trying to get used to the place and the culture,while remaining herself and finding a foothold.
About the feminism issue: imagine coming from our time into a time when death in childbirth was accepted as almost inevitable, a time when men's authority over all of the women of their families, as well as subordinate males was absolute. That authority would be hard to accept to us, but back then there was a reason.
Life in the 18th century Scotland of the Outlander novels was a dangerous business. Woman alone were are the mercy of all sorts of perils. It was up to their men to shelter and protect them. Jamie,young, and in many ways naive, takes that responsibility seriously, putting his very body and life in surety for the safety of Claire by oath, which he also takes seriously. While talking to Claire about why he must beat her, he relates that lessons in life were taught him by his father by the same method when he contravened the rules that kept him from harm.
I thought McDowell acted the role very well. As for being a 'wuss', Octavian was sickly as a youth and had bad teeth, so his being ill during the Battle of Actium is credible.
In this version, Dracula is presented as a romantic figure of old family and a witness to hundreds of years of life and history, a bit world-weary. He sees Lucy as a challenge, something he rarely meets. She is intellectual, strong, and spirited, in Dracula's view a fit mate for him. In that sense he falls in love with her as a person, romantically.
Renfield is useful to Dracula as an agent that, being mortal, can operate in daylight on his behalf. After he kills Renfield,he does tell Lucy that she will have to remain mortal a bit longer; guess he didn't think of all of the ramifications of eradicating his human agent.
Mina is weak and silly. He sees her only as a source of nourishment.
Not horrible, just realistic .Depressing, yes, but realistic. A reality the details of which you try not to even think about until it happens to you. Not murder, but a mercy killing after the emotionally and physically exhausted Georges had given Ann all he had. Their daughter, Eve’s involvement was limited to periodic visits. Georges really had no strength for anything but keeping his wife out of a nursing home and taking care of her. He had no compassion to spare for anyone but Ann, whose condition took up all of it.
There was at least one nurse who seemed to lack compassion and care for his wife. He fired her, and it seemed like after that, he decided to just try to go it alone. I think when Ann spat out the drink and he slapped her, he realized he was at the end of his rope. He never intended to hurt his wife. Unless someone has gone through caregiving a loved one who is a complete invalid, at home, unassisted, it is impossible to understand how exhausting and soul-draining it is no matter how much you love that person.
Georges was becoming frail. Who would take care of them both if his health failed? There was never any indication that Eve intended to step in, and even if she had, her solution would likely have been to place both parents in a nursing home. Georges had promised Ann that he would never allow that to happen to her. He decided (and who is to say that at last exhaustion had not unhinged his mind?) to end her suffering and probably, also his own. We are not really shown how Georges' life ended, but he did leave the note, so it can be assumed that one way or another, he killed himself.
Even more for men than for women, the loss of a spouse who had always been the caregiver, as many wives are, is devastating, and Georges really had lost Ann sometime before. Amour is a fitting title. It really is about a love that does not shrink from aging, debility,or death itself. Georges and Ann were reunited, leaving their home for a walk in George's last thoughts.
My sister, my 13-year-old brother, and I saw it in 1963. We were Catholic School kids, too, but unaware that the Legion of Decency had put it off limits. I don't think it ever occurred to our nuns that we would go to see it.
We realized we had made a mistake bringing our brother with us when the semi-nude massage scene came on and we noticed his eyes bugging out. We were shocked at that scene.
I still have some Egyptian-style costume jewelry from back then. There was a craze for all things Egyptian because of that movie. It was the first time I ever had bangs. We wanted to look like Liz's Cleopatra. I had to be content with the bangs and attempts to copy the hairstyles, and the jewelry. My parents didn't allow us girls to wear eye makeup.
All he seems to do is speculate on what these women (except Johane his sister in law, whom he does bed) might be like or would respond to his advances if he made advances which he is too much aware of his position and how precarious it is to make. When he wants a woman he has one at an inn while he is on the way to somewhere.If he could be said to love anyone, it is his dead wife Liz in whom he is said in the book to be 'content'. He does seem to love and remember with regret her, and the young daughters who died within a short time of each other, as well as his son Gregory and his adopted Rafe Sadler and have affection to a lesser degree for the various stray people he adopts from time to time in the book. but remember Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies are historical fiction. The historical Cromwell loved and promoted the interests of his son Gregory, arranging for him to marry Elizabeth Seymour, the widowed younger sister of Queen Jane Seymour, thereby bringing Gregory into the family of Henry VIII.
As for Johane, (in this series), the attraction seems to have been her resemblance to Cromwell's wife Liz. whom he missed as a widower. In time, each of them feeling guilty (Johane was married to a man with whom Cromwell was friendly and whom he actually liked), they ended the secret liaison, and went on as before.
Again in this series and the historical fiction novel on which it is based, there was a woman named Anselma in, I think it was Bruges, Belgium where he spent time as a young man, whom he regretted from time to time not marrying.
I am reading Wolf Hall, and it seems that the affair with Johane (Joan in this series) occurred because Cromwell missed his wife Liz so much and her sister Johane came to remind him of her and Johane's husband does not care about pleasing her in the marriage bed. Neither of them feels good about the affair and in time decide to end it because the affair has run its course and because of guilt over committing adultery. Johane's husband, John Williamson, is someone that Cromwell likes.