There are so many delightful intellectual threads connecting seemingly disparate people, ideas and events that chasing them down will ensure one never becomes bored with life. Amazon, and its algorithms, help. For example, I recently watched (and have now reviewed) the movie “Surviving Picasso,” in which Natasha McElhone brilliantly plays Picasso’s mistress of a decade, and mother of two of his children, Francoise Gilot. Amazon’s algorithm nudges: Maybe you’d be interested in the movie “Mrs. Dalloway,” (which I did not know existed) because that self-same Natasha McElhone plays the youthful woman, circa 1890, before she obtained the honorific “Mrs.”
That thread crossed another that commenced in a delightful neighborhood park in Atlanta, in 1970. I was “getting on with my life,” as the expression has it, and would retire there to a favorite swing where I would read Simone de Beauvoir’s classic: “The Second Sex.” I was commencing another personal project, which is still on-going, of which I’ve made only modest progress: “What is it that women really want”? De Beauvoir repeatedly referenced Virginia Wolfe, whom, with my on-going trade school education, I had never heard of. But I tucked the name away for future reference and would eventually read “A Room of One’s Own.” With another nudge, not from an algorithm, but a real-life former Amazon reviewer, I would eventually read and review “Mrs. Dalloway,” in 2014, which I rated 5-stars, plus.
The two threads were more than sufficient to make the visual representation of Wolfe’s work, directed by Marleen Gorris and released in 1997, a must-see. Vanessa Redgrave, shorn of any radicalism, delightfully plays Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, a very proper member of the British “gratin.” Like Joyce’s “Ulysses,” the entire movie is set on that one summer day (with some flashbacks, for sure) in which Mrs. Dalloway is planning and executing a black-tie party for the “gratin,” which includes the Prime Minister, helping the Mister’s career, her husband. Gorris does a good job of capturing the stream-of-consciousness of Wolfe’s novel with dialogue representing the thoughts of Mrs. Dalloway, overlaying her actions.
Peter Walsh, played by Michael Kitchen, is just back from sorting out a few things in managing India and makes a beeline to Mrs. Dalloway's place to tell her, inter alia, that he is in love with the wife of a British officer in India. Turns out, as is made clear by Alan Cox, who plays the youthful Peter of circa 1890, that he was a strong contender for Clarissa’s hand, as well as the rest of her body. But he too had problems in determining what the mind really wanted. The theme of the missed chances of youth and partners for life, or at least a bit along that road.
The heavy shadow of what was once called The Great War lies in the background, via men with empty trouser legs and others without an arm. Septimus Warren Smith was a soldier in that war, serving on the Italian front, married to his now Italian wife, Lucrezia. Physically he survives, but he now sees his former buddy running across that sunny London park and stepping on the land mine (yet again) becoming what would later be called “pink mist.” The detestable Harley Street doctor would dress up his condition as “lacking a sense of proportion,” more frequently referred to then as “delayed shellshock.”
Virginia Wolfe’s own suicide would be twice foreshadowed in the movie.
Threads upon threads. While I was reading in that sunny Atlanta park in 1970, Dr. Robert J. Lifton would be working with Medal of Honor winner Dwight H. Johnson to formulate an updated version of “delayed shellshock” which Dr. Lifton called “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Johnson would be dead within the year, arranging for someone else to pull the trigger. Johnson too had seen the “pink mist.”
In that web of threads, in that same sunny Atlanta park I would meet the woman who let me tag along as we traveled overland from Paris to Vientiane (save for a flight over the Bay of Bengal). But like Peter Walsh before me, I could not figure out what she really wanted either. Would things have been different if I had already read Virginia Wolfe?
5-stars, plus, for an excellent movie, loaded with points of connections.
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February 9, 2007 "Please retry" | — | 1 | $26.98 | $3.70 |
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January 28, 2003 "Please retry" | — | 1 |
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| $38.00 | $3.49 |
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Septimus
This reviewer saw Marleen Gorris's 1997 film "Mrs Dalloway," after the novel by Virginia Woolf, when it was new, and it has haunted him ever since, much like the characters here are haunted by their own pasts.Woolf's prose is deceptively clear, while actually concerning itself with many of the issues which emerged into greater prominence as the Twentieth Century proceeded. The casting here is exemplary. Vanessa Redgrave has a exceptional manner of allowing her audience to sense complexities beneath a serene exterior, which makes her ideal for the title role of this woman, who is hosting a party.Rupert Graves (pictured) portrays Septimus Warren Smith, a poet who is now trapped in a marriage and suffers from "delayed shell-shock" five years after the portentous conclusion to World War I. He saw his best friend die before his eyes on the battlefield, and has now descended into psychosis. Mr Graves, who has given us a beautiful array of characterizations on stage and on film, is brilliant as Septimus, who takes his own life after listening to a recording of "Addio, del passato" from "La traviata."The fact that this important film was a financial failure can only be taken as a condemnation of the antics of the film industry and the bad taste of the cinematic public.
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