LADY CHATTERLEY: Truncated Tenderness

There is much to both criticize and praise in Lady Chatterley, the new French film adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's once scandalous novel. Now, I would call it probing naturalness. It is the story of Lady Constance Chatterley (Marina Hands). She is unfulfilled by her rich yet poor husband Clifford (crippled by war injury) and stifled by both his monied way of life and his estate Wragby. Contstance finds gratification in the arms of Wragby's gamekeeper, Oliver Parkin (Jean Louis Coullo'ch). Their intimacy opens her up in more ways than one. Lawrence wrote multiple versions of his novel. Prior to seeing Lady Chatterley in New York last weekend, I read the Barnes and Noble Classics version. Director Pascal Ferran chose another version. Despite some minor differences (in the B&N edition, Oliver's last name is Mellors), the film is a faithful adaptation: it includes most of the book's key characters and sequences, as well as its respect for and love of nature. Yet Ferran's attempt to pack as much in as she can comes at a price. In the book, Clifford Chatterley is a major character. Lawrence masterfully paints a portrait of a man enranged just beneath the veneer of gentlemanliness. And Clifford's confrontation with his wife at the novels' close, while packing a literary wallop, is nowhere to be found in the film. In fact, the film ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly. Overall, I give Ferran credit for crafting a straightforward, beautiful looking Chatterley; a Chatterley that maturely tells (mostly) the novel's story and heart without obsessing over its sex. And Ferran boldly keeps for me what is Lawrence's essential message afloat: no matter how many times the sky falls, life must be lived.

FROST/NIXON: Tricky Smoothness

IN his play Frost/Nixon Peter Morgan gives new meaning to the term political theatre. It is a dramatization -- from the inside -- of David Frost's famous 1977 interviews with Richard Nixon. It is a show that improves as it develops. Although the play's performed without intermission, watching it I definitely sensed it was two halves seeking to form a cohesive dramatic whole. But its first half is not as strong as its second. When we meet Frost, he's British TV personality hopping from the UK to Australia and finally to America, his shallow glamor intact. Nixon, on the other hand, has just resigned from the presidency, giving his bizarre-yet-broken man final salute on the White House South Lawn. The first act centers around Frost's attempts to stay relevant in the cutthroat worlds of television and celebrity. This contrasts with Nixon's effort to just keep merely living. Frost feels interviewing the disgraced former president would be his ticket back to success. When Nixon learns he's to be paid for the interviews, he says yes. In one fell swoop, Frost goes from interviewing the Bee Gees to taking on another rock icon -- but one that is of dourness and dark suits. Yet both could credibly sing "Staying Alive." The play's staging is definitely alive, dominated by the use of television screens perched above the stage. At first, they detract from rather than add to, the drama. They feel very sitcomish. But as the drama deepens, and Frost forces Nixon to confront Watergate, we see Nixon in close-up. We see the pain and shame. I don't think a fellow American could get Richard Milhous Nixon to say what he said in those interviews. And yet it happened, despite the clash of Frost's arrogance and Nixon's swarthy reticence. Michael Sheen captures Frost very well. You can almost see his petrified state just beneath his plastic smile. Here Sheen adds to his effective essaying of real people (he portrayed to great effect Tony Blair in the Morgan-scriped The Queen). Frank Langella is a tour-de-force as Nixon. He's got the 38th president's voice, stoop and awkwardess down pat. He also gives us Nixon's vulnerability and sense of sorrow -- something dark that really hasn't seen the light of day before. Although it starts out unfocused and poorly, Frost/Nixon is bolstered by Scotty Reston, a famous New York Times reporter who serves as a greek Chrous throughout the play. And it ends strongly, all the while reminding us that politics, to paraphrase the sage, is just theatre by other means. And that the best special effects are the human ones.

A New Beginning

I have just created an account on blogger.com. This is my first submission. As I've matured, I have tried to focus my life: figuring out my passions and needs, what works and does not work, and chartering a lifecourse. Two passions are reading and books. Last week I finished reading D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. In it, Lawrence shows a great feel for language and for feeling itself. Let me paraphrase a key moment from it: No matter how many times the sky falls, living life must go on.
I've climbed many mountaintops in my life, especially in this past year. But now, I am in the valley. And my challenge is this: to forge a path not just back to the summit, but to the light as well. And as I climb back, I will live.