Movie review: A Doll’s House

Movie review: A Doll’s House

by | Dec 2, 2017 | Book reviews, Books, Theater and play reviews

“Millions of women…”

 

 

Movie review:

A Doll’s House (1973)

 

Starring Anthony Hopkins, Claire Bloom

Director: Patrick Garland

Based on Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House (1879)

Claire Bloom won Best Actress award at 1973 Taormina International Film Festival

 

If you’re a fan of Ibsen’s stark, unforgiving play, you’ll love this film.

Both play and film have the same undercurrent of desperation. Hopkins as Torvald Helmer faultlessly offers bland, devastating condescension to Claire Bloom as Nora, whose despair grows ever more public as she realizes that she has drowned herself in the domestic dead end of being Torvald’s “doll-wife.”

If you ache, like me, to bash Torvald and comfort Nora as you watch the pervasive and thinly veiled brutality in the Helmer household, then you, like me, must realize how much you wish it could be unimaginable in any way…but in vain…

A Dolls House title page Ibsen Wikimedia

    Title page, A Doll’s House, Ibsen’s handwritten manuscript

 

Nora tells her husband that she had hoped he would take the blame for her transgression, and the disdainful Torvald rebukes her: “…one doesn’t sacrifice one’s honor for love’s sake.”

Nora replies with quiet thunder: “Millions of women have done so.”

Enfin, we understand how Nora could be too hurt to cry, and too happy to remain in a doll’s house…

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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.

 

 

St. Ives, another look…

Less than meets the eye

by Robert Louis Stevenson

(a book review)

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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
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Movie review: “Ethan Frome”

by | Nov 26, 2017 | Book reviews, Books, Theater and play reviews, Tidbits

The wanting never ends…

 

 

Movie review:

“Ethan Frome” (1993)

 

Liam Neeson, Patricia Arquette, Joan Allen

Director: John Madden

1 hr 39 mins

Based on the novel, Ethan Frome (1911), by Edith Wharton.

 

The breaking of a heart can take so long…

I watched the movie, then I read the book, then I watched the movie again (and again), it’s easier than reading the book again, but I’m going to do that too.

I think the book and the movie are interchangeable. Knowing the ending doesn’t reduce the dreadful intensity of this story that gets ever more sad from beginning to end.

Ethan Frome poster from IMDB

The deeply human love story breaks through the arid shell of real life—oh, so briefly…Ethan (Neeson) wants more, Mattie (Arquette) wants more, the viewer wants more…

Every other character in the story seems to, well, not necessarily “want” less, but to be all too righteously satisfied with less.

Except for a brief whirl of a crowded dance scene, there are no smiles on the faces of any of the other characters who live dried up lives, and disdain the spark of love and life in Ethan and Mattie.

Doubtless, the town folk see a pitiless moral lesson in the damaged life of Ethan Frome and the love he must keep stuffed inside him.

I see a man and a woman who share forbidden love, but don’t know what to do about it, and grotesquely fail to snuff it out.

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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.

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many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,
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and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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Book review: The Sea Runners

…it informs, it does not soar…

by Ivan Doig

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The poetic art of Grace Butcher

The poetic art of Grace Butcher

by | Nov 14, 2017 | Book reviews, Books, Poetry, Reviews of other poets

Find an audience,

     and read out loud…

 

 

Grace Butcher’s poems

   beg to be read aloud.

 

They are narrative and artful. She writes about familiar sights and experiences, and infuses them with exceptional imagery and insight.

Indeed, “the best words in the best order.” (I’m sure Coleridge doesn’t mind being quoted endlessly…)

Butcher has a delicate touch as she strokes the fabulous effulgence of her imagination, and explores her sensitivities to life and people around her.

These are worth your time:

Child, House, World

Hiram Poetry Review Supplement No. 12, 1991

 

Deer in the Mall

Self-published by Grace Butcher

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.

 

My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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Book review: Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell

Book review: Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell

by | Nov 7, 2017 | Book reviews, Books, History, World history

Celebrity battle,

      butcher’s work

         on both sides…

 

 

Book review:

Waterloo

 

by Bernard Cornwell, New York: Penguin Books, c1987, 2001.

378 pages

 

This is my first read in Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series. It’s both brilliant and deadening. Waterloo is a celebrity battle for most people, including me before I started Waterloo, and I guess most folks know little more than the outcome: Wellington and the Prussian commander, Blücher, put an end to Napoleon’s final fantastic comeback in Europe. The Little Corporal died six years later in exile.

Cornwell is an appealing storyteller and his exacting descriptions of characters, places and the battlefield milieu are almost a reward in themselves. It’s really impossible to feel detached from what’s going on. Ay, there’s the rub. I felt distress and then full-blown horror as the fighting wound up and then wound down—nearly 50,000 men were killed or wounded in frantically compressed combat that ended on June 18, 1815, in a small valley in Braine-l’Alleud near the Belgian town of Waterloo, which gave the epic battle its name.

Even the slightly Hollywood bravery of Richard Sharpe doesn’t soften the impact of reading about the butcher’s work done on all sides in that violent meeting of men and ambitions. The somewhat formulaic treatment of the lives and loves of key characters is a slight distraction, but it really doesn’t hinder the accelerating martial excitement of Waterloo.

Cornwell is a compelling storyteller. I was greatly moved by Waterloo, but I can’t say I’m glad I read it.

As usual, I offer my kind of book summary here. This is not a standard history book. The characters and plot are all too familiar. I offer my reflections about the author’s style and about the terrible horror of the decisive battle near a little town in Belgium.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.

many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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Book review: Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

Book review: Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

by | Oct 30, 2017 | Book reviews, Books

“The Rats in the Walls”…

 

 

Book review:

Great Tales of Terror

   and the Supernatural

 

Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser, eds.

The Modern Library, New York, 1944

1,080 pages

 

Indeed, these are great tales. The usual suspects are here: Poe, H. G. Wells, Lovecraft, Saki, Maupassant. A few tantalizing names are: Edith Wharton, Kipling, Hawthorne, Isak Dinesen…

My taste for horror and supernatural stuff is episodic, a little of it goes a long way for me. In that respect, this is a perfect volume—a reader can dip into it for a taste, then put it aside for a bit, and then go back for more.

Indeed, one reader’s horror is another reader’s trifle. Nevertheless, try reading “The Monkey’s Paw” again. Try reading “Leiningen versus the Ants” again (sure, you read it in middle school—it’s a different feel for a grown-up). Take a chance on O. Henry’s “The Furnished Room”—be prepared to be punched in the heart.

For my taste, Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” is the triumph of the genre. I first read it 50 years ago. Read it many times since. When I think about reading it again, I tremble.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.

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many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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Book review: The Proud Tower

Book review: The Proud Tower

by | Sep 13, 2017 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, World history

…pay more attention

      to what people want…

 

Book review:

The Proud Tower

 

by Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989)

The Macmillan Co., New York, 1962

 

The Proud Tower is a typical Tuchman tour de force, beaucoup de détails quotidiens, and compelling context. It’s a lot more than a history book.

Tuchman offers her insights into the mindset of her characters: Americans, English, French, and other Europeans during the prelude to World War I—the so-called “Great War.”

They never saw it coming.

You don’t need a summary of the plot of The Proud Tower.

Tuchman confirms the obvious: nearly all prediction is not useful.

One lesson is to pay more attention to what people want, and pay less attention to what they’re doing at the moment.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.

 

Forget about Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Dracula is a scary book, really…

click here

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​Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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