The Lion In Winter

Kathrine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine-Photo Wikipedia

         
Once again I saw The Lion In Winter. Once again I was mesmerized by the screen play by James Goldman. It is directed by Anthony Harvey. The cast include, Peter O'Toole, Katherine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton to name just a few. Music by John Barry. All have done a wonderful job. It was made in 1968.

It is a fictionalized story of historical figures, Henry the II and his older wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. She has been imprisoned for years but is let out to spend  Christmas holidays with Henry II and their three children. Henry's new young love, Alice is also there.

The time is middle ages, the twelfth century. The setting is Castle or Palace at Chinon.

Without giving too much away, it is a story of royal politics between husband and wife regarding which of their sons should inherit the kingdom. Both of them have their favorites. It is about the love between the husband and wife as well as the husband and Alice, the third corner of the triangle.

It is about battle of wits. Who outsmarts who. Intrigue versus intrigues. It is about double-talk. It is mostly a dialogue movie. They are crisp and pointed. They bare, ploys and counter ploys and counter-counter ploys. Throughout the movie I felt a Shakespearean overtone to their acting; yet, it was not so pronounced. The style was not out of step with time of this history.

It is a long movie, but I will see it again if for nothing else than for the screen-play. Besides, I enjoy period movies.

All Is Lost-A Tale of Survival

This is a movie of disquietude on a soundless and seemingly infinite ocean. 

A story of a man who survives turbulence after collision with the help of a survival kit and a map plied with ingenuity. 

 We are only told that the man is about 7000 miles off the coast of Sumatra and it is a story of eight days.  We do not know his name nor do we know why he is on high seas. There is no other cast except the sailor, Robert Redford and thus no dialogue. That intensified the effect. 

The hull of the boat is ruptured after a collision  with  floating debris of storage container. While he repairs the damage and bails out the water from sinking boat a storm hits. 

The rest, one has to see the film to appreciate the ferocity of the ocean and the courage of a lone man to fight it. I have seen few adventure and endurance movies. But I found this to be survival story in its purest form.

If nothing else one can at least appreciate the ordeal the earlier voyagers like, Marco Polo and Vasco Da Gama may have suffered on high seas. And in those days they did not possess survival kits either. 

My hats off to their courage to circumnavigate the globe .......

Black Swan

We saw Black Swan last night. Natalie Portman clinched the well deserved Golden Globe award, again last night.

It is a movie that lets you in the dark recesses of the obssessed, possesed mind of a Ballet artist; obsessed to achieve perfection and possessed by paranoia which ultimately becomes ballerina's  undoing.

Natalie's performance as a good, sensitive unworldly ballerina is beyond reproach. She projected fear, anger, pain, care and resolve as and when appropriate. Barbara Hershey as a mother who lives through the daughter's dream has acted well. Mila Kunis as a faux rival and Vincente Cassel as the choreogrpher are less convincing; perhaps because they were parts of heroine's  "paranoia". 

First half hour and some intermittant footages seem to have been shot by hand-held cameras which made you almost dizzy. Shooting with hand-held camera, I have found to be common in many movies of last few years; it was blatant in Constant Gardner.

The costume for the Black Swan was beautiful as well as realistic; make-up of Portman throughout the movie supported the mood of the scene.

Movie is worth watching once.