|
Post by sgev1977 on Nov 16, 2021 1:52:46 GMT
I just finished it and it’s indeed very honest about the job on a set and Kidman was very into it but my main takeaway is poor Shelly Winters! She was clearly in a very poor condition there.
|
|
|
Post by sgev1977 on Nov 16, 2021 10:55:11 GMT
|
|
|
Post by sgev1977 on Nov 16, 2021 12:11:32 GMT
She told that story before, I think in the interview with Sofia Coppola, but she told more details here.
|
|
|
Post by mllemass on Nov 16, 2021 12:50:33 GMT
I'll mention this here because it is about Campion and not TPOTD...it's been a few minutes since I read the piece and the bit about her childhood nanny is what has stuck with me. It was quite upsetting to read that portion. I love how open she is in all her interviews. She wraps up these harsh truths in a bit of charm and humour, but the message always comes through. Remarkable. I just read the article, and I feel the same way. I’ve been thinking about childhood trauma a lot recently. I had a cousin who died a couple of years ago, and we recently came across an article about her online. She was a filmmaker whose films were mainly feminist documentaries. She was teaching filmmaking at a university before she died at 60. The article about her was more of a profile, and it’s on a filmmaking website. Because she’s not around to interview, the entire thing is quotes from people who knew her - her son, one of her ex-husbands, one of her sisters, and various friends and colleagues. I was shocked to read about the life she had led. Our family lived with hers when we first came to Canada, and then we lived next door to them until I was 9 and we moved away. Our fathers were brothers, and very close - so how did I not know what had happened? They always seemed to be such a happy, fun family - not a boring one like mine, where my parents both worked and my sister and I had chores to do. Now, at my age, it dawns on me that “boring” actually means stable and trauma-free. It turns out that my father and his brother (who died 15 years ago) were very different men with very different ideas about raising children. My cousins lived in fear of their “fun” father. My cousin - the filmmaker - was removed from their home when she was 15 after receiving a beating, and spent a year in foster care. To escape from her family, she got married for the first time at 18, but it didn’t last. Her second marriage, at 30, didn’t last either, but produced a son. Apparently, her sisters and bother experienced similar trauma with similar results - multiple marriages beginning very young, and lots of resentment. The article goes on to suggest that the feminist themes to her films are a result of her troubled, violent childhood. I always saw those cousins as so strong, independent and outspoken, but they never spoke about what went on at home. I know that lots of stuff was kept from me by my relatives over the years because I was one of the youngest in the family (and they still tend to treat me that way at my age now), so maybe everyone else knew what had gone on? In any case, I’ve never been so grateful for having had “boring” parents and a trauma-free childhood. And my parents continue to be like that today.
|
|
|
Post by onebluestocking on Nov 16, 2021 19:27:20 GMT
I haven't seen it since it was in the theater, but I remember that I didn't really care for it.
|
|
|
Post by sgev1977 on Nov 17, 2021 1:12:13 GMT
I watched it at the time and, again, recently. I really liked it. It maybe sounds crazy but it reminded me to a huge scandal of sexual abuse that was happening in the country around that time: a middled age unattractive music manager who used his mega popular female star, someone who presented herself as a liberated, rebellious and independent young woman, to “hunt” for young girls, some of them minors, who he later abused. At some point, they all were living like a non-religious cult. I felt that Campion film responded to some questions about that situation: why a smart young woman with so many dreams would end with a dangerous manipulative and much inferior looking man? Why a woman would do the dirty work of abusive men and enlist innocent young women for him to abuse them? Why a man like that could dominate in such a way a group of women? I haven’t read the Henry James novel but the adaptation seemed to suggest to me that all that romanticism little girls grew up and their innocent idealism could be used as a weapon against them by some malicious agents. I don’t know, I think the film was a very crude representation of a huge weakness inserted culturally in the female brain but in such a way that they even believe they are being free, liberated or progressive meanwhile they are falling in a huge trap.
I also liked In the Cut but both were despised by critics, tho.
By the way, I just read a silly comment on the NYT piece by a woman who claimed that Campion’s best film wasn’t The Piano nor TPOTD (which she hasn’t watched) but An Angel at My Table because contrary to the other two it did not included male violence! That’s not true! It’s about a woman who is so shy that her beloved male professor interned her in a mental asylums meanwhile he sells her artistic work and in the asylum the male doctors decide that the only way to cure her is to lobotomized her. Again, because she is just too shy! And I haven’t even mentioned the untalented boyfriend who gets jealous of her poetry! This all based on a true story. It’s a bio! I mean how is not all of these violence? Of course, she could prefer Angel over the others but that’s a silly reason! The film is not just a “sweet” film about a female as she said. It’s very hard to watch because yes, the female protagonist is horribly abused by men. The difference is that it’s not a domestic situation but a systematic one.
|
|
|
Post by onebluestocking on Nov 17, 2021 5:14:36 GMT
I loved that movie, but The Piano is my favorite (until I see TPOTD.)
|
|
|
Post by gingerale on Nov 17, 2021 16:35:54 GMT
And now she's making the rounds on Twitter because Variety HAD to ask her the inane "would you direct a superhero movie" and obviously she said "no." I really hate Variety sometimes.
|
|
|
Post by MagdaFR on Nov 29, 2021 12:03:11 GMT
|
|
|
Post by sgev1977 on Dec 24, 2021 2:10:30 GMT
I just opened an old book and I found an old bill of a video rental store and do you know which DVD I rented on October 27th, 2000? Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke! And Doug Liman’s Go (someone remember that film?)
|
|