Cloning; movie THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Archimedes Plutonium
--- quoting DFS brochure ---
Wedn March 26, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY D: Jane Campion, UK/USA, 1996,
144 minutes
Jane Campion's austere, demanding adaptation of Henry James's novel is
really the portrait of two ladies: the disastrously pliable Isabel
Archer (Nicole Kidman) and the seductively controlling Madame Merle
(Barbara Hershey). Dispensing with the Jamesian humanism, Campion
serves up another unsparingly critical, neo-feminist vision of a world
where women earn the freedom to succeed and (more commonly) fail on
their own terms.
--- end quoting DFS brochure ---
--- quoting snippets from student flier ---
" THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY is James' first fully exposed case of human
manipulation; of what it means to be a consumer of persons and what it
means to be a person consumed." -- William H. Gass
The fundamental theme in his work is the innocence and exuberance of
the New World in contrast with the corruption and wisdom of the Old.
The novel, as is typical of its times, can be seen as a kind of manual
of everyday life, dealing with such major issues as morality, love,
death, birth, marriage, and divorce as it contrasts innocence and
wisdom, dark and light, Europe and America.
.... lengthy character analysis
--- end quoting snippets from student flier ---
I forgot to mention in the film yesterday of Romeo & Juliet that I
thought it keen to use the words of Shakespeare. I have often opined
that if I were a teacher in school that I would have students watch a
Shakespeare movie first and then read the play. There is nothing worse
than having kids struggle through something and not appreciate it and
then later in life see the movie and appreciate it. If the director had
used plain language and every now and then squeezed in Shakespeare
lines such as Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo? I think I would
have liked this movie even more. Many of the words spoken escaped me.
And todays movie THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY was very fun for me. I
laughed when noone else was laughing when Isabel was trapped in that
god awful marriage. How so great a mind and spirit Isable was , so
great that she got trapped in a nightmare of a wedding. I laughed as
Osmond cast his spell on her. I laughed when Osmond was throwing out
those romantic diddly and Isabel fell for them.
So tell me that the world does not need cloning when you see people
all around you wasting their lives in love and sex misery. When
instead, with cloning one can look forward to a full and happy life of
work and labor in doing something one truly loves to do, and have and
raise children (your clone) without that life wasting misery entwined
with someone you really do not love.
With the divorce rate at 50% in many countries, and people wondering
if cloning is unethical?
I had a lot of fun with this movie, the character development was
superb.