jeff and i watched cassavetes' 'a woman under the influence' over two days this week. (it took us two days because i am an old person now and i flipped out a bit when i realized it was after 11pm and we still had 45 minutes left... nay! sleeps!)
i really liked this film. i'm not sure i could say i enjoyed it... there's an awful lot of heart-hurt in it, and i'm not sure exactly how i feel coming out the other end. i read somewhere it was supposed to be a more positive look at mental illness than was prevelant on screen at the time. to me it wasn't so much positive as tragically unresolved. there's a lot of love in the film, sure. but also a wild-ton of dysfunction, and all the characters seem to be rather ill, not just the mother-wife who is the focus. and nothing changes. i was left feeling like if you kept watching, you would see the same cycle of breakdown and buildup and plateau over and over and over. and maybe that's what cassevetes was after...
but it was good. and sometimes even beautiful. maybe.
* oh yeah! also. there is the use of the swan lake theme in a few key scenes, which made me think about 'black swan' and how this - a.w.u.t.i. - was such a better picture of a woman struggling with insanity... interesting. i bet you could write a solid comparative essay. *
1 comment:
I bet YOU should write that essay. Comeon... what are blogs for?
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