esrosedotblog

EMOTIONAL SADISM

Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Mike Nichol's version of Edward Albee's

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)

This is a trial by fire. At times I wanted to retreat to my foxhole.

The play is well known. What is forgotten is the venom and force of the dialogue between the four principles.

There is a tendency to ask oneself what this play is about.

The answer is as plain as the play before us. It is about people gone off the track with grief and disappointment and failed ideals. And more.

This is Edward Albee. His plays are all on this level of multiple meaning. They work realistically on the surface but with the proper direction and acting one is forced to travel into the deep recesses of the work and, it is almost a guarantee, to have emotions which are both familiar and also surprising. Experiencing the play holistically. This is, of course, the difference between low and high art.

As a movie, we have high art meeting low art and with Nichol's direction and the exquisite camera work of Haskell Wexler, the result is quite satisfying.

Nevertheless I would have cut a bit more. It is arduous watching.

One advantage that a contemporary viewer has in watching this film is the distance from the movie star lives of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton who were living their real lives in the tabloids of the time and were hot film stars on top of it.

Now, we see plain actors doing a very good job. I have never been much of a Taylor fan but I have to hand it to the old girl in this one. And probably most of her films. She was one hell of an actor and quite the equal of her partner Burton.

George Segal and Sandy Dennis are quite good and hold up their end which, for the most part, is in the victim role.

I wouldn't mind seeing this again sometime. A 4 out of Netflix5.

Labels: best films