WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

Neha says
It takes 131 minutes with George (Richard Burton) and Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) to know the answer to who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? But every minute of this emotional rollercoaster ride teases and taunts and blows us away with its emotional power. You will feel like a fly on the wall of their quaint little cottage, the main set piece of all the mind games, acid dialogue, biting sarcasm and marital bickering that envelops the space with a claustrophobia that’s palpable. Burton may seem like the henpecked hubby but the resounding impact with which he can crack the whip is as nerve wracking as the outwardly brash Taylor whose disillusionment, passion and idiosyncrasies find voice with a fire known only to Elizabeth Taylor. So yes you do not want to be stuck in the middle these two veterans whose characters do not understand the term “anger management” or rather “emotional control”. In all probability it would prove disastrous like it does for biology professor Nick (George Segal) and his brittle wife Honey (Sandy Dennis.) The razor-sharp dialogue, tense scenes, first- rate performances and the well-paced insights into the background and psyche’s of our four characters makes them so deliciously three dimensional but come the BIG REVEAL at the end and what we have is a shocking fourth dimension to George and Martha that is an “Ahhhh” and “Ohhhh” moment for some but for me it was a “Damm” moment-How could I be so fooled into feeling I knew these two guys to only know I was so wrong?” A wrong that felt so right, giving George and Martha a bone-deep motivation that will melt the most cynical heart. For a directorial debut, Mike Nichol’s effort is nothing short of a milestone and an honorable adaptation of dramatist Edward Albee’s Broadway sensation for which Taylor, Dennis and cinematographer Wexler even bagged the Oscar nod. For a psychological understanding of mid-life marital blues where love and abuse are two sides of the same coin, it’s a class room case study of the frailty of the human spirit, the masks we wear and the damage we do sometimes consciously and sometimes tactlessly. Nichol’s never looses that focus with a grip on tone; the drama just explodes like a grenade on screen almost in every scene and watching four yes just four characters feels far from under crowded-there is so much baggage in the closet that a clean up is required and the one night the film revolves around is just that- a much needed, revealing and disturbing clean up.

Ira says

Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe? I am, I am. Well at least of Mike Nichols’ no holds barred, gut-wrenching adaptation of Edward Alcee’s powerful play about a middle aged couple living in New England with some awful skeletons in their closets and serious demons to battle. Elizabeth Taylor, who put on a clean thirty pounds for the role of Martha and looks frumpier, more jaded, and wearier that you can imagine (she is considered one of the worlds most beautiful women after all) delivers a performance of a lifetime and Richard Burton is absolutely on par. (This being one of six films the couple would star in together during the 1960’s). Ernest Lehman’s shocking, volatile, roller coaster of a screenplay gets life, breath, fire, and silent eloquence through these two actors who become Martha & George, a couple who love, hate, and love to hate one another. Who taunt, tease, hurt, play games, and emotionally and verbally abuse one another, but who ultimately cannot let go of the deep bonds that tie them together.

Nichols opens his film with sheer atmosphere, a long, wide take as the camera pans slowly from right to left and then stays still, watching. A lyrical, haunting melody plays (the film has an eerie, yearning sound score courtesy Grammy nominated Alex North, the man who brought jazz and modernism into Hollywood’s world of music and sound) as the opening titles appear against a dimly lit façade of a college campus building. Martha & George are exiting, at first small, indistinguishable figures, slowly bigger, Taylor’s cackle-like laughter shaking the screen just as the bold lettering of the films title, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe” appear, the title itself a reference in the film, to an amusing song and dance that made everyone laugh at a college get together from where the two are returning.

Pain and laughter, bitter hatred and deep love, caustic sarcasm and gentle, tender affection are two sides of the same coin, the same sentence, sequence, frame and mood of the film almost throughout the narrative and Nichol’s masterful storytelling oscillates between these tremulous extremes with ease giving us moments that burst with emotion or simmer with quiet thoughtfulness. All the while, the director draws you in with a steady, gripping urgency and a growing intimacy. Superb camera work, the use of either cluttered or deliberately stark frames, closes and extreme closes and an economical use and play of spaces create a hysterical claustrophobia right from the word go as Martha brusquely shoves things under a bedspread, metaphorically pushing things under the carpet, avoiding confrontation, truth and reality, preparing to receive the two ‘guests’ who are about to show up at their house in the dead of night. A younger couple, biology professor and his slim-hipped, mousey wife. The fireworks are just about to explode.

Taylor hisses, and yells, purrs and moves with a snake like, languid but precise gait, breathing sensuality and forgotten glamour. But there is something sad about her Martha even as she guzzles down bourbon and makes crass jokes. Sad in the way she changes her clothes into something tighter, barer, more revealing. Something sad in Burton’s loaded silences as he tries to ignore her humiliation and mockery in front of their guests, and something horrifying and powerful in how the narrative strips each of these characters down naked. I loved the dancing interlude about halfway through where frenzy, fallacy, fiction and truth hurtle together and I loved how Nichols gets his actors to perform as if a camera wasn’t there, sans inhibitions and fear. That’s what Albee’s writing requires after all. This is a compelling, often brutally honest, painful psychological, emotional and personal journey for the two protagonists and Albee creates a distinctive universe for them to live in, one of rich language, metaphors and pent up feelings. A world where human beings are often better understood as mice, witches, murderers, monsters, failures, lovers, and flops. Evocative, gripping and chilling, Nichols, in his debut directorial feature shows his skill in adapting material from the stage to the screen beautifully and proves, as he would with future films like The Graduate & more recently, Closer that he’s unafraid to make us look at ourselves. And in this case, so are his incredible actors. Well done, all.