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.

UNFORGIVEN (1992)

Neha says
EASTWOOD loves his characters- you can see it with the sort of time he spends lingering over them, giving them heart, scars and demons to wrestle with and you can actually feel it through the performances, the nuances, the rustic mid west setting and the darkness looming in and out of each frame- I’m talking about UNFORGIVEN here folks- and a true connoisseur of his art ( I’d like to believe I am) will relish the insights, the tragedy and the triumph that we get to see in this 1992 Oscar winning western drama. Here Eastwood plays WILLIAM MUNNY- a tragic and temperamental widower who gives up the world of guns and assignations for the simple life. But when an arrogant cowboy kid comes by- asking him to pick up the gun once again to kill two evil cowboys responsible for disfiguring the face of a hooker back in the small town of Big Whiskey with a 1000 $ prize money attached to it- Munny feels this might just be the opportunity to earn some much needed cash. So he joins the kid on his journey, picking up his ex partner NED (Morgan Freeman) on the way. But the three musketeers didn’t account for Little Bill (Gene Hackman) a notorious local sheriff who will not allow guns and assassinations in his domain-who can crack the whip, pull the trigger and flash a cocky smile to get what he wants, when he wants.

When the camera pans slowly onto Eastwood’s face with a cowboy hat at a 100 degrees angle with his brooding intensity in place and he fires an old 80’s rifle and knocks down not one but five cow boy heavy weights it’s a bonafide western movie moment. When he aims his gun at an important character and bellows “See you in hell” your screaming for an encore. There’s enough of rustic gun fighting and shootouts on offer- but it’s really in Eastwood’s hands that you celebrate more often the character whose doing the shooting than the actual physical gun match itself.

We spend the better part of the film understanding the nuts and bolts of Munny’s character and how this hunter became the haunted. In a poignant moment Munny, in a delirious state turns to his friend Ned and talks of dying and seeing the angel of death. And yet the irony of it all is that while he insists he’s no longer a killer anymore, each step of the way he walks towards that very destiny and when its play time-the gun comes out and he fires like it’s what he was born to do. I call that the POWER of dramatic writing.

There’s another thing that stands out- Little Bill- the so called bad guy of the story. I couldn’t wait for the face-off between Eastwood and Hackman-albeit only two but watching these actors in the same space is my kind of eye popping candy. Little Bill is an enigma-his violent actions are understandable but his sadistic nature is highly questionable. Hackman makes him quite the charming bad boy, giving Little Bill that big edge (especially when you have the svelte Eastwood to lock horns with). I for one would have loved to see even more of Eastwood and Hackman at cross-fires with each other- in more of a verbal battle- but I’ll have to settle for watching those two scenes in repeat mode to satisfy that urge.

Eastwood settles for the real and raw feel-I wouldn’t want it any other way. He focuses on his characters and gives each one a definite edge-he makes us sympathise with the bad guys and makes us deconstruct the bad actions of the good guys in a new and empathetic light. So my question to Eastwood really is- Who do you want the audience to root for? There’s just enough enigma surrounding each one to make you root for all-and maybe clever, clever Eastwood that was always the plan.

Ira says
Munney: It’s a hard thing killing a man. You take away all he’s got and all he’ll ever have.
The Schofield Kid: Yeah but I guess they had it coming.
Munney: We all have it coming kid.

What is it about the Western film that makes you question ideas of humanity, morality, and mortality so fundamentally? There’s something unforgiving in the exchange above and a stone cold steeliness on Eastwood’s face, somehow befitting the man who has been Hollywood’s quintessential anti-hero since he started his career in the 1960’s.

There is, in fact, something unforgiving about the way Eastwood, revisits the genre that made him a Hollywood icon. Unforgiving in the opening scene and in its depiction of violence, in the Sheriff’s (a brilliant Gene Hackman) reaction to a woman in his town being ‘slashed up’ by an angry cowboy, in the way the narrative penetrates ideas of justice, morality and humanity and in the films characters who are at once familiar types but much greyer and complex than we assume. Prostitutes, outlaws, no good tramps, vicious ex-gunmen, fresh recruits with no respect and patience for their elders, and supposed lawmen like the Sheriff who turns out to be the most ruthless are not ‘types’ but fleshed out, complex personalities making us question and re-think that eternal conundrum of good guy versus bad guy with a fresh, often unsettling new vigor and interest.

The story of an ex gunman William Munney played by Eastwood, who’s reluctantly pulled back into one last mission, Eastwood’s swan song to the genre won 4 academy awards including for Picture, Director, Editing and Supporting Actor for Hackman and is a strong, uncompromising film. Eastwood brings a brooding weariness to his performance but this time he’s also aided by a superb supporting cast and a rich screenplay. Hackman, Richard Harris, Morgan Freeman and Maggie Smith are excellent and I liked how the writing not only inverts traditional ideas, mores and norms of right and wrong but also, pivots the story around women, blends elements of fact, fantasy, fiction, with violence and truth through the character of ‘WW”, a writer names Beauchamp played by Saul Rubinek and brings in a generational theme through the character of The Schofield Kid (James Woolvett).

Surprisingly dark and layered in its writing, its dimly lit, moody landscape, and orange-tinted color palette, through sharp editing and camera Eastwood also creates the precision and economy he’s famous that convey both a sense of tension and often a ruminative silence. In its landscape, its texture, its cast of veteran male and female actors, in its themes of gunmanship, gunplay, killing, prostitution, law, moral accountability, and a way of life, this one is a hard hitting, well made tribute to the Western, a film that is for all ages.