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Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim 03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare! 03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm 02.24 Obama’s New Plan 02.21 Time to Pass the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2009 Media Watching
03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion 03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax 03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq 03.03 It's Snow News 03.03 The Woeful Washington Post 02.28 The NYT Veers Neocon 02.18 US Media Replays Iraq Fiasco on Iran Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution US Politics, Policy & Culture
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives" 03.09 Thinking About Countings 03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism 02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium 02.24 The Last Flight of Joe Stack 02.22 Thinking About Sadie 02.18 All Systems Go: No Dysfunction in Profitable Afghan Enterprise High Crimes?
03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem 03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue 03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children 03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session 03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid 03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda 02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery 02.23 Israeli Unaccountability and Denial: Suppressing the Practice of Torture 02.22 American Genocides: is Haiti Next? 02.18 Israeli Abusive Administrative Detentions 02.16 MK-ULTRA: The CIA's Mind Control Program Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network 03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource 03.05 Is the Recovery Real? 03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You 03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction" 03.01 Thinking About Fees 02.22 Campaigning for State-Owned Banks 02.22 Social Security Will Fall To Obama Before The Taliban Do 02.19 Obama’s Stealth Entitlement Commission 02.19 Selling Out America to Wall Street International
03.03 Muslim Disunity 03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation 02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist 02.24 The Dubai Hit 02.22 Holland Has Had Enough: Killing of Innocent Civilians Goes On Apace in Afghanistan 02.19 The Placeman Cometh: New IAEA Chief Stokes Iran War Fever for the Bush-Obama Regime We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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FILM REVIEW:John Curran's "The Painted Veil"Pretty Maugham remake showcases actor Edward Norton at his brittle best .Maugham's colonial stories aren't really about fine scenery. They're about prickly heat and disillusion.
Though W. Somerset Maugham wrote novels and this movie is the third screen adaptation of one of them, his facile pessimism found its greatest expression in the short story form, and John Curran's adaptation of Maugham's novel, Painted Veil, has a short story arc.Maugham characters are often trapped in fatal either/or's, like the young man in "The Alien Corn." This story became one segment of a classic English film collection of Maugham tales, "Quartet." In this one, Harold French directed Dirk Bogarde as George Bland, who, when told he will never be a fine pianist, goes and shoots himself. Real life tends to make more room for compromises—like becoming a piano teacher, for instance.
Maugham gives his story a pattern not unlike that of Hemingway's famous "Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber." In that story, a man who seems a wimp to his wife wins her back by turning out to be brave on a safari in Africa—and then promptly dies. Fane too displays fine character that wins his wife's love—then dies. Though their first month or so at the outpost is deadly, Kitty comes to admire Fane when she learns of his own bravery and dedication in combating the local epidemic. She turns serious herself and starts to work in a French orphanage where Diana Rigg is the Mother Superior. Love grows up between Kitty and Thomas, and then Thomas contracts cholera at a yet more remote and more disease-ridden location, and expires with Kitty by his side. When we see Kitty back on a street in London five years later her with her little boy, who may be Walter's or Townsend's, she's become a good woman. Townsend turns up, but she declines without a moment's hesitation his suggestion that they get together again while he's in town. This screenplay has softened Maugham's typically more cynical plot. In the book, Kitty goes back to Townsend and is seduced by him again. Watts is perfect in sheer blouses and under fancy umbrellas and handles a range of emotions with her usual warmth and conviction. Of course, lacking the unearthly beauty of an icon like Garbo, she cannot embody the frustrated, tragic woman with the same perfection. She's a better actress, but what does acting matter when your competition is Garbo? Norton is excellent here in a role that fits his own brittle manner as well as the natty Edwardian ensembles fit his slimmed-down body. He fades into his character even more convincingly than in his other starring role this year as the remote and mysterious Eisenheim in Neil Berger's "The Illusionist." Norton is a brilliantly self-conscious actor, like Kevin Spacey but without Spacey's fearful presence. Norton seems remote, but give him the right role and he soars. "Infamous"' Toby Jones is convincing as Waddington, the local official who's gone native. He has the appropriate simpatico but burnt-out quality. The authenticity of the crowd scenes was obviously aided by the presence of Chinese co-producers. John Curran's film, with a neatly delineated screenplay by Ron Nyswanner ("Mrs. Soffel," "Gross Anatomy," "Philadelphia"), is an opportunity for audiences to have a romantic Masterpiece Theater sort of experience in a beautiful exotic setting, with nice looking Twenties costumes, party scenes, period Chinese crowds, rickshaws and sedan chairs and lovely hills and greenery, even a big delicate water wheel that appears built out of dark matchsticks. But Maugham's colonial stories aren't really about fine scenery. They're about prickly heat and disillusion, and a much more effective version of one is Wyler's 1940 "The Letter," with Bette Davis, or the aforementioned "Quartet" (1949) or the equally brilliant British filmed story collection, " Encore" (1951), where the settings don't threaten to overwhelm the emotions as much as in this pretty production. ©Chris Knipp 2006. Knipp is a California-based artist and writer. For more of his work, or to contact him, visit www.chrisknipp.com.
Copyright © 2006 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on December 27, 2006. |
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