What's going on people? Do you prefer to see Corny movies like A beautiful Mind, Mystic River, or Chicago???
What's going on?? Portrait of a Lady is a serious drama. It's too sad there is little discussion on this movie.
This film is a period piece examining the situation of a female in another time. That is already one strike against it in Hollywood. The fact that Malkovich (in my opinion) did not play his character subtley enough for the first half or so of the movie also strikes against it. But it is not his fault, because some of the dialogue (again, to me) seemed misplaced or not quite efficient enough to drive the story with the proper vigor it deserved. There was no reason for Archer to approach or attach herself to Osmond at all (in the film). It was not in her character. In the book, James uses elipses in these situations--thus implying her own mental decay and wandering without the use of any words at all.
And then there is the music. Well, it is fantastic--what can I say, but not used correctly in the film. If you listen to the soundtrack, you hear Kilar's music in its entirety and immediatly realize the small snippets used throughout the film do not suffice.
Then there is the ending, which goes beyond ambiguity and can be understood only by its director. Archer is trapped until she dies, I believe, in the cage she built for herself. In a dramatic twist of irony, her own pride becomes her downfall and all of her safeties (excepting Casper...who she continues to refuse) she has let whither away (Ralph). Similarly, so are Serena and her daughter trapped and sentenced--excepting the fact that the daughter had no will in the making of her cage. But I am now speaking of the book again. The movies insistance upon a final ambiguity is unexplainable. This movie had been a dark drama up until the end. There was no reason to place a tiny peep hole in the locked door that leads to possibilities. Her possibilities were gone. She made the wrong choices.
The original book is certainly more powerful than this film, which just didn't translate quite accuratly enough for my taste. It was an interesting film however, and it does warrent a viewing or two.
B
Because it SUCKED!!!!!
shareWhile I'm not in total agreement with the reason being "it sucked," that is one way of describing what to me is an incredibly overworked, needlessly complicated plot line that seems to deny major realities of life -- even life in 1872 -- at every turn.
Like many US people of my generation (born in the 1940s) I was on the receiving end of a lot of hoo-hah about Henry James and, like most of us, read stuff of his -- beginning in high school English and continuing through university.
At university, there exosted a required grammar and usage course, which was a major hurdle faced early-on by all English majors. Directed by a fabulous old bat of a teacher who was an HJ adolatress, she set for our final exam the creation of a diagram of one sentence from a James novel. That sentence was just about 700 words long. To do this required the use of butcher paper a yard wide and two yards long. You had three hours. If you didn't complete it, you failed. If you did complete it, you could still fail for getting too many things wrong. My year with a class of about 40, there were no As, 1 B, 10 Cs, and the rest were kablooey because even with a D it didn't count if you were a Major. It took most of us about a half-hour to find The Subeject of The Sentence, and from there on it was sheer panic.
Reread the paragraph I just wrote, expand it 20 times, and you have an idea of what I felt about this film.
And worse, about poor old, frustrated, overcomplicated HJ himself. Why have we been burdened with carrying this guy along in the annals of literatura? Why did Leon Edel write a five-volume biography of HJ. Why do people continue to read it?
It's nigh-on to a crime. The Literary Crime of nearly two centuries.
Yikes.
PS: Forgot I charged Denial of Reality above. Given Henry James's take on human life in general, the major charge would be one of creating unneccesary boredom. Considering that none of the characters, top to bottom, has any really redeeming human quality and that none of them would be missed if he or she evaporated mid-sentence, all I can imagine is that people somehow are seduced by the idea that James actually knows something about human life. Well, to be fair, he does -- he knows human life as frustrating, depressing, unconquerable, impossible to change (even if you emigrate to England), and therefore to be played with as a grand chess master might play with a novice. Except there are no "wins," only pathetic, confusing draws that leave this reader/viewer saying something like, "Why have I just wasted X hours of my life reading this drivel?"
Or words to that effect.
Why are you sooo obsessed with this film? There are plenty more underrated films that are far better then this one.
I'm getting ever so slightly sick of people sitting there scratching their backsides whining I don't understand this film, whats going on???.
I personally feel I understood Isabel completely. I understand why she was drawn to Gilbert Osmand, I understand why she trusted Merle so much, I understand why she withdrew from Caspar. And I understand why it all became so hideously emotional and overwhelming for her.
I think you need a lot of emotional experience to fully understand this character. You need to appreciate your emotions.
"A film is-or should be-more like music than like fiction..." Stanley Kubrick