Thursday, August 20, 2015
Just as it is
Most attempts to make a movie out of a stage play are failures.
By "opening it up", directors end up violating the intimacy and effect of sitting in an enclosed space with actors and an audience. What has worked, no longer does.
Today's film is an exception.
They took the play, put all the scenery on a larger stage set and then put the actors through their paces.
The camera roams the space with the actors but the feeling of the real theater, the breath, the spaces, the unreal reality, come through beautifully.
I suppose it has something to do with the material as well.
Two men meet. One ostensibly straight one very gay. Nature takes its course.
The theatricality helps us hear the words. To get the nuance. Falling in love in these circumstances is a pretty complicated thing. And the film sails with the complications. There is a bit of a trick ending but by the time we get there, it does not seem that way. The full advantage of a theater over film. They have harnessed both here.
This is a great movie. Worth the time and trouble to listen. It has subtitles but I think that would ruin things.
Oh. It is based on Plato's Phaedrus. One of the guys is a bookworm and is holding the book in the opening scene. Not a spoiler. Just a tipoff. He even reads the section to the other msn. I missed the point myself. Plato. Not on my reading list.
A 5 out of Netflix5. I am glad it is in our library.
Labels: films, gay films, theater
