Lolita

Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It was written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, in 1958 in New York, and in 1959 in London. It was later translated by its Russian-native author into Russian. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a 37-to-38-year-old literature professor, Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with 12-year-old Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after he becomes her stepfather. Lolita is his private nickname for Dolores (both the name and the nickname are of Spanish origin).

After its publication, Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best-known and most controversial examples of 20th-century literature. The name Lolita has even entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious girl. The novel was adapted to film by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne. It has also been adapted several times for stage and has been the subject of two operas, two ballets, and an acclaimed but failed Broadway musical.

Lolita is included on Time's List of the 100 Best Novels in the English language from 1923 to 2005. It is fourth on the Modern Library's 1998 list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th century. It was also included in the 100 Best Books of All Time, compiled in 2002 by the Norwegian Book Club.

My Thoughts on the Book . . . (And the only book that I’ll offer my thoughts on).

Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov is one of my favorite authors. My tidy collection of Nabokov works are the only books on my shelf that I’ll never lend out. His intriguing blend of poetry and fiction is entrancing and strangely uplifting. Some of Nabokov’s phrases are so beautiful that you can actually hear the cellos and violins accompanying his prose. Yet after watching the 1997 remake of Lolita, it is no longer my voice that I hear when rereading Nabokov’s work. It’s the rich drone of Jeremy Irons’ tone that steals into my quiet time. It also happens that Lolita is my unsurpassed favorite book of all. Nabokov took flack for Lolita and insisted that it wasn’t pornographic. Perhaps in his mind, or should I say, in the mind of Humbert Humbert, that may be so. Good writers fall deeply into their character’s psyche. In Lolita, Humbert narrates his serene upbringing on the Riviera, where he meets his first love, the twelve-year-old Annabel Leigh. Annabel and the thirteen-year-old Humbert never consummate their love, and Annabel’s death from typhus four months later haunts Humbert. Although Humbert goes on to a career as a teacher of English literature, he spends time in a mental institution and works a succession of odd jobs. Despite his marriage to an adult woman, which ultimately fails, Humbert remains obsessed with sexually aware young girls. These nymphets, as he calls them, remind him of Annabel.

Perhaps young Humbert died right along with Annabel. Perhaps Humbert was merely the ghost of his former self: still a fourteen-year-old boy in search of that inner peace that he’d lost and a time when his life had been unscathed: those peaceful days on the Riviera.

What I would give to be able to pick Nabokov’s brain, to understand his creative thought process. It’s very easy for readers to assume that authors share similarities with their well-defined characters. That’s the greatness of some authors: they are able to become intimate with a fictitious character that resides inside of the creator’s mind’s eye. What people may not know about Nabokov was that he had synesthesia, a harmless neurological disorder. Synesthesia is an anomalous blending of the senses in which the stimulation of one modality simultaneously produces sensation in a different modality. Synesthetes hear colors, feel sounds and taste shapes. What makes synesthesia different from drug-induced hallucinations is that synesthetic sensations are highly consistent: for particular synesthetes, the note F is always a reddish shade of rust, a 3 is always pink, or truck is always blue.

How interesting. Nabokov’s writings are famous for descriptions in which sounds, shapes, and colors are intermingled in order to form a powerful sensual effect. In addition, synesthetic details are unique proof of the underlying unity of all things. Since this condition influenced his work, it can be said that synesthesia is Nabokov’s unusual gift. The famous novelist was also an illustrious lepidopterist, husband, scholar, and avuncular cutie– “a fat, hatless old man in shorts,” he’d often described himself.

My Review of Lolita

5—The Perfect Sundae

Adrian Lyne deftly sculpts poetic imagery out of perverse intentions, selling sad love in the dark. Iron’s rich tenor pricked my heart at “She was Lo. . .”
—Tanja

LOLITA (1997)

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

― Vladimir Nabokov, 

Director: Adrian Lyne
Writer: Stephen Schiff (based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov)
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, Melanie Griffith, Frank Langella

This movie is a closer version of Nabokov's novel than Kubrick’s 1962 version (even though Nabokov helped write the screenplay for the 1962 film).

Brief Synopsis of Lolita

USA, 1950s - Lolita was written as the prison memoir of a European professor, Humbert Humbert (Jeremy Irons), who is haunted by the death of his first love, who died of typhus. We follow the middle-aged Humbert, who moves to America and takes up residence with Charlotte Haze (Melanie Griffith) as soon as he discovers that she has a thirteen-year-old daughter named Dolores (Dominique Swain). He becomes obsessed with the child, who reminds him of his childhood love. Charlotte confesses her love for Humbert; although he has no interest in her, he decides to marry her in order to get closer to Lolita. To have some alone time with her new husband, Charlotte sends Lolita off to camp and then discovers a journal that Humbert has kept, detailing his true feelings for her and Lolita. Panicked, Charlotte runs from the house to mail a letter and gets killed by a car. Humbert then heads to the summer camp and lies to Lolita, telling her that her mother is ill. They embark on a cross-country road trip and form a forbidden, yet tumultuous relationship along the way.

The spectacular opening scene, showing a broken Humbert listlessly steering the wheel, with Lolita’s bobby pin pinched between blood-splattered fingers, instantly sets the sad tone of this film. His vacant expression, his cheeks speckled with blood, and his car weaving through the barren countryside mirrors the desolation that he exudes. Howard Atherton’s superb photography ascends to an almost poetic level: the faded magnificence of Cannes, the sharp precision of the small towns, the lonely shadows of a rainy night. Ennio Morricone’s poignant music highlights Humbert’s emotional viewpoint. All of these elements combined are simply soul rendering.

Morricone’s “Lolita”

The film’s mastery was owing to the fact that it told Humbert’s story through his own expressive voice, from his own obsessive, heartbreaking, tormented perspective. There’s a constant feeling of loneliness that is intertwined throughout this exquisite film. As Humbert, Jeremy Irons creates one of his boldest onscreen performances. His facial expressions cross the astonishing complexity of Humbert’s inner life. You find yourself rooting for this manipulative, petal-plucking man, whose ravenous need to nurse his own heart creates a path of destruction, which ultimately ends on that lonely opening scene. 

A clip of Dominque Swain’s audition for Lolita

In the eye of the storm was Dominque Swain, who played the lead role of Lolita. This giggly sophomore had been selected from among twenty-five hundred hopefuls to portray the teen seductress. This was Swain’s first acting job, and she personified the role flawlessly. Fifteen years old when the filming began, she took on one of the most notorious title roles since Brook Shields starred as Violet, a child prostitute in Pretty Baby, directed by Louis Malle.

Unlike the character in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, our ’90s nymphet wears retainers and, in one scene, dunks those same retainers into Humbert’s drink. Pigtailed and gangly, sporting those platform shoes, her tantrums and quick sarcasm lighten this otherwise dark journey. And Humbert loves every moment of her bubblegum blowing. It’s during these silly moments in the car that every line that wars across Humbert’s face vanishes, and he is fourteen again.

The chemistry between Swain and Irons was undeniable. The two actors wonderfully balanced the scenes with seduction and mischievousness, while subtly reminding the viewers of their true egocentricities . . . which brings me to the next topic, Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Hayes. 

In an interview, Melanie made a comment about the weight she had gained in order to play the role of Charlotte. “Do I have limits? Yes,” Melanie drawled. “I did put on weight for Lolita and I’ll never do it again . . .”

In the book, Charlotte, Lolita’s chain-smoking mother, is a large woman: overbearing, nagging, overly religious, and hard. She’s the one barrier between Humbert and Lolita. The film, however, portrays a different character. Melanie Griffith is ideally cast as the annoying, widowed Charlotte. With her generous pout painted in a brash red, her affected diction, spoken with that spidery soft voice, was almost comedic. As buoyant as she was, she still managed to shimmer and fade, long before her unexpected death.

Frank Langella is effectively menacing as Clare Quilty, who lures Lolita from Humbert. Quilty is a different kind of evil than Humbert. He’s the quintessence of a true pedophile. Langella embodied his role, exposing his true sins while remaining in shadows and low shots. And yet Quilty still manages to steal Humbert’s redemption. The later scene where Humbert attacks Quilty in his mansion was like the last piece of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit. But as a robe-clad Quilty hammers down on the piano keys and as Humbert continues to hammer down on him, that same mismatched piece somehow fit on an almost operatic level.

The film comes full circle, to that spectacular opening scene, with a dejected and bloody Humbert driving recklessly, and the serene countryside almost sighs.

I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago—but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither—I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

Casino

From Nicholas Pileggi comes this tale of love, marriage, adultery, murder, and revenge . . . Mafia-style. It is at once a love story and a bigger-than-life business story, the business being Las Vegas’ multibillion-dollar casino gambling industry—and how the mob finally lost its stranglehold over it.
It is a real-life love story set in America’s favorite never-never land, a Mafia tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, as well as the inside account, in never-before-published detail, of just how the mob lost its control of the neon moneymaking machine it had created, in which everything ran like clockwork—except for the little fact that Tony Spilotro was sleeping with his best friend’s wife.

My Review of Casino

5—The Perfect Sundae

Scorsese blooms in soil that he knows best. In Scorsese’s hands, it was all aces.
—Tanja 

Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro as Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein · Sharon Stone as Ginger McKenna · Joe Pesci as Nicky Santoro · James Woods as Lester Diamond.

Brief Synopsis of Casino

Co-written with GoodFellas screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi and starring the perfect cast that included Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, this film was destined for success. With narration courtesy of Ace and Nicky, we learn their dance of how cash is won, lost, counted, and skimmed. In some cases, voiceovers can be as taxing as reading the back-story in the first chapters of a book; but in this situation, the rich dialogue, unrepentant violence of the well-portrayed characters, and themes of allegiance and duplicity mark Casino as unadulterated Scorsese. Although some feel that it was not the director’s best work, and that Casino seemed to derive from Goodfellas, these opinions didn’t lessen the overall impact (at least for me). As usual, Scorsese succeeded in skillfully interlacing envisioned sonnets out of twisted ambitions.

When you love someone, you’ve gotta trust them. There’s no other way. You’ve got to give them the key to everything that's yours. Otherwise, what's the point? And for a while, I believed, that’s the kind of love I had.
—Ace Rothstein 

Ace’s car explodes. There was no buildup, and it opened with a bang. Joe Pesci’s early scene shows him stomping down on some poor guy’s head in a dimly lit bar and screaming obscenities as a dazed Robert De Niro looks on with that famous pinched brow and curled lip expression. This scene introduced the gangster movie that Scorsese insisted, “isn’t a mob film.” Say what you will, Scorsese, as it makes no difference what you call it. Casino goes down smoothly; it is the exact cocktail of drama, violence, and greed. Now add a hot blonde into the mix and you can add lust to that list.

Sharon Stone received her only Best Actress nomination to date for playing Ginger, a prostitute who becomes the wife of the mobster Sam “Ace” Rothstein.

Sharon Stone playing Ginger Rothstein was the perfect touch in this already bloody great film. The bold wardrobe choices of floor-sweeping beaded gowns dripping in jewels, flawless makeup, and retro hair has her owning every scene. Ginger is an ex-prostitute/hustler with a weakness for her former pimp, Lester (James Woods). The first time Ace sees the gorgeous Ginger, she’s playing craps for a high roller, then throwing a hot tantrum, tossing the man’s chips in the air when he won’t give her a decent cut. The slow motion shots pan from the knowing glint in Ace’s eyes to Ginger’s instinctual, predator’s gaze—it’s enough to stop time. You just know that she’ll never love him; indeed, that doom is later played out when Ace fails to mold her into a worthy wife.

Ace’s marriage proposal to Ginger is as hard and plastic as a Vegas chip. That’s what made this story so great: their marriage is a business deal. Ace gets his dazzling trophy wife and Ginger gets the gold that keeps her painted in riches and glitter. Even when their daughter is born, that motherly instinct fails to click for her. Ace’s jealousy sends his wife back to hard drugs. She also returns to Lester, the seedy pimp, and finally, to Nicky, who sexually mistreats her but provides her with the means to get back at Ace. What was once a beautiful trophy wrapped in gold is scraped down to the hard metal and left out in the rain to rust. Ginger’s demise was the hardest to watch.

Ace’s calm narration that opens the film slowly slides into panic by the third hour. At the order of the mob’s Midwest bosses, Nicky’s crew drives him and his brother, Dominick, out into an isolated cornfield for, unfortunately for the Santoro boys, some batting practice. First up is Dominick, who’s beaten to a gory pulp with a metal baseball bat as Nicky is forced to watch in agony; then, it’s Nicky’s turn to have his forehead split open like a melon. Adding one last insult, the thugs roll his lifeless body into a ditch alongside his equally dead brother, and pour dirt over the fresh corpses. The morose narration informs us that Nicky and his brother were buried “while they were still breathing.” You knew it was game over.

The word was out. The bosses had enough of Nicky. They had enough. How much were they gonna take? So they made an example of him and his brother. They buried them while they were still breathing.
—Ace

GoodFellas

A Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family is a 1986 nonfiction book written by crime reporter, Nicholas Pileggi. The account chronicles the story of Mafia mobster-turned-informant, Henry Hill. This book is the basis for the 1990 Academy Award-winning film Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese.

My Review of GoodFellas  

5—The Perfect Sundae

Based on a true story, Scorsese and Pileggi fuse their talents and tell Henry’s story from the highest Hill, and we all hear it loud and clear. 

—Tanja



Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro as James Conway · Ray Liotta as Henry Hill · Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito · Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill · Paul Sorvino as Paul Cicero.

Brief Synopsis of Goodfellas 

The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighborhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family.

To me, it meant being somebody in a neighborhood full of nobodies.
—Henry Hill 

The overwhelming Mafia life that director Martin Scorsese has adapted from Nicholas Pileggi's bestseller, Wiseguy, is an American crime classic. In perfect Scorsese style, heartless characters are made intricately human. With just the right brushstrokes spreading three decades into a two-hour timeframe, the film bristles with brutal fervor, humor, and insight. The correlation between the works of Scorsese and Pileggi creates a delicious Italian mix of hot peppers in oil.

It was Scorsese who saw the potential. After having read Wiseguy, he called Pileggi, and the rest fell harmoniously into place. Scorsese grew up in Little Italy and frequented the same sidewalks and picturesque restaurants as the mobsters who were known as wiseguys or goodfellas. Like Scorsese, Pileggi was also raised in New York City, where he worked as a journalist reporting on the mob.

Henry Hill, played by then rising star, Ray Liotta. Even Liotta’s fanatical laugh was noteworthy.

Hill was the Brooklyn-born son of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother. He went to work for the mob as a kid in the ’50s and remained profitably employed by pinching, scamming, and breaking a few skulls. It was Hill’s association with drugs and his disloyalty that made him a mob target. During the ’80s, Hill was allowed to enter the Federal Witness Protection Program.

On the 20th anniversary of the release of Martin Scorsese’s seminal gangster movie, Henry Hill was quoted describing his friends, Jimmy “the Gent” Burke and Tommy DeSimone, played by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, as murdering psychopaths.

“The whole fucking crew were homicidal maniacs,” Hill said. “Just about every guy was a cold-blooded fucking murderer. It was tough for me. Every day I was scared. I never killed nobody, at least not on purpose. I shot at people but we didn’t stick around to find out what happened.”

Like all stories, Hill’s has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The people who color Hill’s world of crime make this film leave behind a clean print. (Fingerprint).

Scorsese’s characters were comprised of a vicious foursome including an unnerving Joe Pesci, Boobi De Niro, Paul Sorvino, and the sniggering Ray Liotta. Their outstanding performances exploded to the sounds of Bobby Vinton, Tony Bennett, and the Crystals.

To read about Jimmy, Robert De Nero’s character: americanmafiahistory.com/jimmy-burke/

The genius, of course, was in the little details, such as Pileggi’s use of expository descriptions, which were translated by Scorcese to the screen. It was Scorcese’s brilliant catch that actually heightened Pileggi’s telling imagery.

Pileggi explained the cabstand’s gangsters: “Some of the visitors were so large that when they hauled themselves out of their cars, the vehicles rose by inches. He saw glittering rings, and jewel-studded belt buckles and thick gold wrist bands holding wafer-thin platinum watches.”

In that one scene, we see the car droop and mount as over a thousand pounds of gaudy glam is positioned onto a Brownsville curb.

This is what dynamic photography and sharp editing does: it takes you right in, through Scorsese’s camera lens, to that wormhole of Henry’s and the American crime family. There’s a wonderful blend of montage, starting with the bright eyes of a twelve-year-old boy who rakes in more money than Pop. We skate smoothly forward, watching through a blur of sparkles and sin, to Henry’s courtship of Karen, a Jewish girl from outside the neighborhood. This is the spirited Lorraine Bracco that we remember and love, not the reserved woman who played Tony’s physiatrist on the Sopranos.

I love the blood and guts of this mafia story, but I prefer the silk-to-metal angle. It all begins when Henry impresses Karen with a night out at the Copa. Sophistication moves on the heels of Henry’s imported shoes as he leads his lovely inside, avoiding the lines of anxious people waiting to get in. Henry escorts Karen to a side door and pilots the way down a staircase into a complex, shadowy passage of smoky outlines, through the bustling kitchen, past the sweaty waitstaff, and into the nightclub. In that one moment, when the headwaiter acknowledges Henry, Karen’s gemlike eyes sparkle at the new table that was placed in the center just for them, sealing the deal for her. It was that suave move, along with the flattering stares of the crowd, that showed you she was liquid in Henry’s hands. This stretched camera take, starting from the lineup outside, weaving through the kitchen, and settling right into the heart of Henry’s world, was a methodological sensation. Via book or film, it was that passage through the maze, taking Karen from the outside to the inside, where we drifted through the delusion that Henry had traded his soul for.

And that's the hardest part. Today everything is different, there's no action . . . I have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food . . . right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles with ketchup. I'm an average nobody . . . get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.
—Henry Hill

The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Talented Mr. Ripley is a 1955 psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith. This novel first introduced the character of Tom Ripley who returns in the novels Ripley Under Ground, Ripley’s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water. The five novels are known collectively as the Ripliad. Tom Ripley is a young man struggling to make a living in New York City by whatever means necessary, including a series of small-time confidence scams. One day, he is approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf to travel to Mongibello, Italy, to persuade Greenleaf’s errant son, Dickie, to return to the United States and join the family business. Ripley agrees, exaggerating his friendship with Dickie, a half-remembered acquaintance, in order to gain the elder Greenleaf’s trust.

My Review of The Talented Mr. Ripley



5 — The Perfect Sundae


Anthony Minghella seduces his audience as we thirst through the ambitious eyes of Tom Ripley.
—Tanja



Director: Anthony Minghella
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Matt Damon and the late, Philip Seymour Hoffman



Brief Synopsis of The Talented Mr. Ripley

Manhattan lavatory employee, Tom Ripley, borrows a Princeton jacket to play piano at a lavish garden party. When a wealthy man makes conversation with Tom, he pretends to know Dixie Greenleaf, the shipping magnate’s son, and agrees to sail to Italy, to convince the idle son, to return home. In Italy, Tom befriends Dickie and Marge, Dickie’s cultured fiancée, and utilizing his chameleon charms, pretends to love jazz, while harboring homoerotic hopes as he soaks in luxury. Besides his mendacious ways, Tom’s talents include spot-on impressions and forgery, so when the handsome and confident Dickie tires of Tom, dismissing him as a bore, Tom goes to extreme lengths to make Greenleaf’s privileges his own.

“I always thought it would be better, to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” Tom Ripley

In this particular case, the film led me to read the book and, because I had no preconceived notions about The talented Mr. Ripley, the movie did not disappoint. Indeed, I favoured the film over the book. Very much so.

The Talented Mr. Ripley was Anthony Minghella’s notable follow-up to his Oscar-winning victory The English Patient. Italy, late 1950’s, and Minghella’s timeless canvas captures the sensuousness of la dolce vita, the sweet life or the good life in Italian. This is a carefree life of prosperous, young emigrants in postwar Italy and the relaxed imagery washes right over you. You’re there, and it’s dreamy (regards to the cinematographer John Seale, who also worked on The English Patient and most recently, Prince of Persia and The Tourist). Minghella’s dexterity is not only with what you see, it’s what lurks; that unsettling sense of what is hiding beneath the sunny smiles and graciousness. Mingella is methodical with his direction, cautiously developing the fissuring of Ripley’s mind without letting the film fall into well beaten path of imitation. We know these films; the physiological thrillers that keep our interest but are easily forgotten. Over a decade later and when asking myself, what are my favorite movies? The Talented Mr. Ripley shot up from the deep sea of my mind; like the cork from a vintage wine bottle.

A fine cast, and Minghella consumes every ounce of their talents.

Dickie Greenleaf, played by Jude Law, (who, with those eyes, just exploded on camera) and Marge Sherwood played by Gwyneth Paltrow, live in a rustic Italian village, walking in the shade of cobblestones lanes; their days spent enjoying at cafés or languishing on the picturesque beaches. As Dickie pursues his dream of being a jazz musician, Marge soaks up the ambiance with plans of finishing her novel. It’s a pampered life, courtesy of Senior Greenleaf, who is appalled at his son’s slipshod lifestyle and when he runs into Tom Ripley, a friendless young man living in New York, with a hunger to be more than who is, is then hired shipping tycoon to sail to Italy and retrieve Dickie Greenleaf.

Just a taste of Dixie’s opulent routine, consisting of boating, sunny beaches and jazz and Tom becomes not only addicted to the dream, but he morphs himself right into it. Strangely, Minghella’s eye for the trivial details are so finely drawn that the film becomes one of those renaissance paintings that if you stare long enough, you can actually feel as if you’re there. Not only did your eyes drink the vision in, but so did your ears. Not a great fan of jazz, yet the soundtrack gave the gorgeous scenery an even stronger pulse. There was nothing funny about the song, My Funny Valentine. Actually, I’ll forever have the creeps when hearing that composition. It was the exact blend of vintage jazz, including music by, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and what became one of my favorite songs by Sinead O’Connor ―A Lullaby for Cain.”

That was probably why this film was unnerving. Not only did I fall in love with the surreal lifestyle, but I fell in love with the idea of Tom fitting into this canvas where he didn’t belong. It was that haunting scene in the boat where Dixie humiliates Tom and tells Tom (in his perfect American accent) that he wants him to return to America, that he can be a “leech” and “quite boring.” In the subsequent heated quarrel, Tom lashes out and strikes Dickie with an oar and cracks his skull open. It was that whack on the head that stopped time, that momentary pause, that double-blink, and all at once, Dixie’s skull fissures and the blood oozes in raging streaks across his face. That animalistic need for survival plays out against the calm blue as Dickie strikes back in retaliation, but now Tom must finish what he started and kills his ‘love’ in an anxious, tearful slaying. Silence falls; the boat sways, and water sloshes. Tom weeps and cradles Dixie’s bloodied body. Again we see the brilliance of Minghella as the aerial shot catches that final moment when Dixie’s corpse is swallowed by the Mediterranean.

With Dixie gone, it is the perfect canvas, wiped clean in an endless blue and now all Tom Ripley has to do is finish painting himself into what was once Dixie Greenleaf’s world.

“If I could just go back . . . if I could rub everything out . . . starting with myself.”
—Tom Ripley

Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes is a 1996 memoir by the Irish author Frank McCourt. The memoir consists of various anecdotes and stories of McCourt’s impoverished childhood and early adulthood in Brooklyn, New York, and in Limerick, Ireland. It also includes McCourt's struggles with poverty, his father's drinking, and his mother's attempts to keep the family alive. Angela's Ashes was published in 1996 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. A sequel to the book, 'Tis, was published in 1999 and was followed by Teacher Man in 2005.  

My Review of Angela's Ashes

           

5—The Perfect Sundae



Parker’s haunting imagery is both shown and told with profound nuance; even the relentless Limerick rain cannot wash away the ashes of the dead.
—Tanja


When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
—Frank McCourt

Director: Alan Parker
Starring: Robert Carlyle, Emily Watson, Michael Legge, Joe Breen, and Ciaran Owens

Brief Synopsis of Angela’s Ashes

Angela’s Ashes unfolds as Frank and his family attempt to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The film opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of Mary Margaret, the only daughter, their days are colored black. They return home to Ireland, only to find the situation there even worse. Prejudice against Frankie’s Northern Irish father makes his search for employment in the Republic difficult, despite his having fought for the IRA. And when his father does find money, he drinks it away.

Angela’s Ashes didn’t receive the stellar accolades that I felt it deserved. It could be that, due to the essential trimming of the book to fit into a screenplay, certain characters and events were lost; this might have been the major hindrance to the picture’s triumph. Devoted readers are notably protective about their favorite books, and often impossible to satisfy.

In this particular case, the film led me to read the book and, because I had no preconceived notions about Angela’s Ashes, the movie did not disappoint. Indeed, I favoured the film over the book.

There were so many great facets that Parker combined, telling Frank’s story with sweetly sad undercurrents. Parker’s eye for cinematography (You may remember his work in Evita and Mississippi Burning) transmits the dreary ambience of the slums of Ireland. The streaming voice-over from Frank’s perspective accompanied bleak shades of gray, dilapidated residences divided by narrow alleys, and puddles riddled with urine that pooled along the doorways. If Alan Parker’s intention was to lay the McCourts’ burdens on his audience, I would say that he succeeded. A child’s coffin is in itself a hard thing to see, but the soulful music of John Williams not only added to the richness of this picture, it almost carried it—like shadowy pallbearers. His compositions were ghostly and tragic, their presence narrating right along with McCourt.

Hear John Williams’ theme music to Angela’s Ashes

A little tidbit about John Towner Williams . . .

John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. His resume includes some of the most popular and recognizable film scores in cinematic history, including E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, Schindler’s List, Memoirs of the Geisha, and War Horse. It’s not surprising that John has a long-standing association with Steven Spielberg, but what is surprising is the fact that the only major film that John didn’t compose pieces for was The Color Purple, which just so happens to be included in my top-ten movie list.

This is why having the perfect soundtrack is crucial. For the gloom of Angela’s Ashes, Williams shifted the emphasis of power to the basses and cellos, creating a deeper sound that fit the nature of this heartrending memoir. This method evoked dark connotations in the character and depicted the key theme of the film. The lows in certain scenes, such as the child’s funeral procession, were perfect examples of the brilliance of both director and composer. This is where a deep command of the entire symphony orchestra and the massive string section created a spectacular intent. Because you heard the pain, you felt the pain.

Of course, the production designer, Geoffrey Kirkland, who only brought out the sun for those brief moments, showed Limerick in its true form. And when the sun did shine, the intensity was subdued by what lay rotting in the alleys, like the dead flowers of yesteryear. Kirkland’s gift is his ability to recreate a world that stays true to its former identity. I watched this film with my father, and certain scenes made him weep. My father was born during the Second World War. Constant rain was not what added to the suffering in Croatia (former Yugoslavia); the common thread that Kirkland weaved through his imagery was the hungry, dirt-covered faces and looming despair. This is the universal language of affliction.

Of course, the performers in this exquisite film brought all of these elements together. The three actors who play Frank at the three different stages of his life echoed each other to a rhythmical height. Not only were the actors similar in appearance, but they all exuded that same brokenness. Smiles were rare. And if the McCourt children did smile, it was over nut-covered chocolates and Cleaves Toffee and hopeful giggles when Senior McCourt gobbled up a sheep’s eye during Christmas dinner. The dim and low-angled camera shots had grown Frank following his father through the dark alley, and in return, his father shooed him away. It was as sad as it was final. Yet the mastery occurred when Frank sat with the blind woman next door, listening to Billy Holiday. There was a transforming simile taking place in this scene, and the message was strong. Billy Holiday gave Frank hope. Billy Holiday sang in the wet alleys of Limerick.

Yet the particular standout performance would have to go to Watson. Her facial expressions and mannerisms, and the way in which she held her cigarette and blew the smoke with such passiveness was hauntingly spot-on. This was a woman who had endured unrelenting disgrace and had nurtured bitterness towards her husband who thought that he was too grand to pick up coal from the streets in order to provide warm milk for the baby’s bottle. Her submissive aggression transmits beautifully, and we’ve all known women like Angela; their stories are grim and torturously heroic, where triumph is momentary and happiness seems unfeasible.

The tragedy of this story is that it’s true; even more tragic is the fact that it’s a story many have known and lived. Malachy McCourt’s wish was to buy pretty dresses and patent shoes with silver buckles for Mary Margaret, the family’s first daughter, who died while in America. Her death was the first gravestone, the first domino, that tipped the others.

In the end, Frank is a man with a clear dream, and that dream is to see the Statue of Liberty again. His early chapter about the Atlantic Ocean, where “great sheets of rain gathered to drift slowly up the River Shannon and settle forever in Limerick,” is metaphorical because the ocean is the only way in which Frank can achieve his goal of returning to America. The ocean is calling for him.

Again, this is where Parker pulls it all together: Frank turns around and lets go of his former selves and the wounded part of him that he leaves behind to rot in the shadows of wet Limerick, and the flowers of yesteryear.

You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
― Frank McCourt