I accually chose to read the novel by Philip Roth just because I saw Al Pacino is playing in this movie. Thank God the novel was fairly short because it was pure crap. Is the movie more...ehhh...entertaining?
shareMovie is really entertaining. I watched it at TIFF on it's final screening and it was sold out. People pay almost twice of regular price so yeah it's pretty good.
I watched Birdman today and it seems like both films are written by the same writer but with mood swings.
The book isn't complete crap it just isn't fleshed out........it has a lot of interesting ideas in it that aren't fully explored. I'm hoping the movie takes those ideas and cuts some things and adds some others.
I haven't seen it.........but honestly if you really read the book closely you can actually see how it could be a better film than a book and that isn't the case often (especially with Roth books).
filth and moral decadence....just like this feckless country.
shareYou're right, the novel is garbage. It's the worst Philip Roth novel, by a mile. It could have been subtitled, "Old Man Gets Impossibly Laid and Then Blows His Head Off". My reaction when I saw they'd made a movie of it was, "Oh Christ...". It's sad that this was your entry to Roth, though, because he's written some beautiful novels. Try Everyman - it's very short (~150p), so it should quickly counter-balance the stank of The Humbling. Then move on to American Pastoral, which is actually one of the greatest American novels, in my opinion. Don't short-change yourself the experience of a good book just because you picked up a lemon the first time around.
shareMisstep. Nice reply. :-)
I know Roth is supposed to be a great novelist. I will give Everyman a go. I was aware that The Humbling had gotten bad reviews before I started the reading it. I have just seen another film based on a Roth novel, The Human Stain.
I hope the movie with Al will be better than the novel....just because I like Al. ;-)
But hey, I can enjoy a lemon any time...as long as it is written tastefully.
I'd just like to point out that your subtitles is actually a major spoiler for the film Misstep, you might want to edit it.
shareThe novel is "complete crap", yet here you are...
If it was 50% better than your trolling review of the book... you'd still hate it. So do everyone a favour, and move-along.
torydude. What on earth do u mean by "yet here you are..." What a stupid thing to write. For me to write that I thought the novel is crap is not trolling. Even the critic in major papers was very negative when it came out. So why don't you do me a favor and move along. Arrogant prick. (No wonder really with a nick like "torydude")
Anyway, back to the core of things.
I have just watched the movie and it was so incredebly much better than the book. Al Pacino made gold out of rubble and made it shine. I really liked the film.
I was excited when I heard that Al Pacino was going to star in a movie based on Philip Roth's novel The Humbling. I've read all of Roth's novels and I was hugely impressed by the film version of his first, Goodbye Columbus. Alas, the other film versions of Roth's novels have been disappointing, from the miscast Human Stain, the lackluster Elegy (from his novel The Dying Animal) to the ineptly terrible Portnoy's Complaint. I hoped that Pacino would help make The Humbling memorable.
Pacino is great in the movie. So is Greta Gerwig, whose magnetic personality revives Pacino's aged actor and draws her female and trassexual exes back to her, despite her starting a new relationship with a man.
What lets the film down is the script. Several people have commented here on the Last Act's similarities with Birdman- I like the line that it's like the writer of the Birdman rewrote the same script, but with mood swings, LOL. I don't know who came up with the idea first of having a troubled older actor having a breakdown on the stage and confusing fantasy and reality. Roth's Simon Axler is aware of what's happening to him and around him. He doesn't have any illusions about Pegeen and her past: as in the film, her ex lover, the dean, warns him constantly that Pegeen uses people and dumps them when she's through with them. He knows he's bankrupting himself by buying her expensive clothes (it would have helped the film to show them going around Prada stores in New York rather than an ordinary looking clothing store near Simon's house.) In the book Simon doesn't return to the stage. Pegeen comes to spend the weekend at his house. He's ready to tell her that he can father a child, after meeting with a doctor and having a fertility check. Before they can have dinner and talk, Pegeen appears with a packed bag and tells him it's over. She takes her expensive clothes and he suspects she's leaving him for the woman they picked up at the restaurant.
I was let down that the threesome scene, so pivotal in the book, is revealed to be a fantasy sequence in the movie- we see Simon waking to find Pegeen and the woman hand in hand, ignoring him. The novel's Simon enjoys Pegeen's audaciousness, and despite his back problems encourages her in exploring her desires. The sex toys make an appearance in the film too, but as a symbol of Simon's not being able to satisfy her. Pacino's Simon isn't anywhere as adventurous as Pegeen, and it's no wonder when she leaves him.
I was also surprised by Sybil's speech to Simon revealing that she discovered her husband abusing her 8 year old daughter. She's tragic in the book, and ends up killing her husband, then killing herself. In the film the abuse is brushed away and quickly forgotten. Like Sybil's family, Simon and the audience see her as a deluded character who's fixated on Simon's acting as a hit man to shoot her husband, as he once played a Death Wish type role in a movie.
The movie begins with several promising themes about losing one's gift, one's way in life, and fantasy being taken for reality, then reality as fodder for sensationalism- Sybil turns into another hot story on True Crime TV programs. The movie would be far more powerful if it followed the novel more, if it ended with Simon alone, with his life empty, turning to a Hemingway style suicide, thinking of Sybil as a last inspiration. Instead, there's a final scene derivative of Birdman's real gun being fired on stage that is utterly unconvincing. Surely if an actor stabs himself with a real knife the other actors wouldn't continue with the final lines of the play but would call an ambulance instead.
The Last Act is worth watching, but I recommend that people read the book before they see the movie, and think of how it could have been a heartbreaking view of a man who like King Lear, has to face his hard existence after he has lost his power and the one who he loves.