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Double Feature
Sunday, January 2, 2000 Today Jack had to drive to Yakima to pick up his older daughter from the treatment facility. She's been there for the past month. So he asked me to set the alarm for four thirty in the morning, which I did. I poked him out of bed, too, after he took another fifteen-minute snooze. He and younger daughter H---- were on the road by six thirty, I think, and I went back to bed. I spent a relaxing morning doing some work on this month's design, but it was such a pretty, sunny day that I wanted to get out of the house. I decided to walk to the movie theater and catch up on some of the films I wanted to see! Ok, so I wasn't outside that long, but it's about a mile walk to the Harvard Exit from my house.
The first movie, up in the upstairs at the Harvard Exit, was Mansfield Park. I'd heard that the filmmaker had made a few changes, not to the basic story, but to the main character of Fanny. In the book, she's a quiet, shy little thing, with a firm moral center. Some might even call her priggish, which is one of the reasons that this isn't one of my favorite Jane Austen novels. In this version, Fanny has a lot of the young Jane Austen blended in! Austen's juvenilia (great word!) and prose from her letters is used as Fanny's correspondence with her sister. She's a story teller and an acute observer of those around her. This is a good way to get the Austen narrative voice into a movie; a good thing because that's one of the main reasons we still love her books. It does change the balance of this story, though. The movie's Fanny is a much stronger, more vibrant character, which makes it all the more puzzling that the man she ends up with doesn't notice her romantically much sooner! The BBC version (four hours long) did a better job with this. They had time for all the subplots and conversations that bring out the moral intricacies of the story, which isn't just a romance. The actors weren't so goodlooking, but they fit better. This is still very much worth seeing, if you get the chance. But look for the BBC video, too.
I didn't have long to wait in the main theater downstairs before it was time for the other movie. I whiled away the time by doing some fantasizing of my own. Cradle Will Rock (lots of comments at the IMDB page) tells the story of a famous production by Orson Welles and John Houseman's theater company in the late thirties. It was funded by the WPA (a government program that was aimed at getting folks back to work, including theatrical types). The particular play "The Cradle Will Rock," through a combination of circumstances, was shut down on its opening night. The company found another theater and performed without sets or costumes, bowling the crowd over. I really did enjoy this! Tim Robbins wrote and directed, with a great cast. I especially liked Cherry Jones who played Hallie Flanagan, the director of the government funding agency. The parts of the story that I wasn't so crazy about were the sections (more fictionalized than the main story) dealing with the people working against the funding agency. One reviewer compared the style of the movie to the breakneck-paced screwball comedies of the thirties, and I do see that! Scenes with Welles, Houseman, and the composer talking over each other, arguing then hugging, are very funny. Vanessa Redgrave, as the flighty but sweet wife of a steel tycoon, is totally charming and lovely. I highly reccommend this one -- you won't see another movie like it!
I did some window shopping on the way back home, bought two pirogies (I just had time before the bus came), then rode the bus five blocks up the hill. If I'd had to wait long for the bus, I would have walked all the way, but the fact that it was just about to show up at that stop was too tempting.
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