tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post6920930230536099482..comments2024-02-24T18:30:26.749-07:00Comments on prairiemary: WOMEN THROUGH THE EYES OF MENUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-58880116541201156402007-07-06T10:11:00.000-06:002007-07-06T10:11:00.000-06:00Ah, God the ultimate assassin. One could interpre...Ah, God the ultimate assassin. One could interpret the story as meaning that God fell in love with Sarah and therefore gathered her to HIS Bosom! This would not, of course, change what some people see as the most affecting part of the story, which is the relationship between the two men. That legendary fourteen-year-old Australian boy would have rude things to say about that, but then I suppose it would be mostly invisible to him.<BR/><BR/>Prairie MaryMary Strachan Scriverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00538160009129822362noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-48336092238237540862007-07-06T05:17:00.000-06:002007-07-06T05:17:00.000-06:00Hm - "snuff films," then? Here I shall stop with t...Hm - "snuff films," then? Here I shall stop with the porn comparisons, lest I sound like an authority.<BR/><BR/>Your point about Sarah is one reason why I prefer the movie to the book. I thought Sarah, via Moore, was more alive than the Kristin Scott Thomas character in TEP. From beginning to end, Sarah had motivations I could understand (even if Bendrix was a petulant shit), while Thomas's character was a complete cipher.<BR/><BR/>As for artificial impressions, those are the speciality of the film industry. I can't imagine a film adaptation of, say, <I>Crossing To Safety</I>.Whisky Prajerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14076228013022881173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-70898644207464520832007-07-05T09:07:00.000-06:002007-07-05T09:07:00.000-06:00Perhaps it is an element of porn that both of thes...Perhaps it is an element of porn that both of these films end in the deaths of the women (also "The Constant Gardener" with Fiennes, though in that tale he dies as well). The essence of porn is sex detached from love and all the other adjustments and commitments one must make with a long-term partner, so these stories preserve an artificial impression of the love as super-intense (esp. in a dangerous time of war), unlike the long tapering-off of physical desire characteristic of, say, marriage. Couldn't one argue, isn't Greene arguing, that if Sarah lived, she would not be able to maintain her faithfulness to her promise to God, which in the movie she breaks anyway? So in the end she loves Bentick more than God. Then it is the husband who is faithful, though how can one be faithful if he was so uninvolved until there was an emergency?<BR/><BR/>Prairie MaryMary Strachan Scriverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00538160009129822362noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-5769593457124145622007-07-05T05:34:00.000-06:002007-07-05T05:34:00.000-06:00I've only seen The End of the Affair. Curious that...I've only seen <I>The End of the Affair</I>. Curious that Dutton was concerned about echoes of <I>The English Patient</I>. Beyond sharing the boyish (and boyishly petulant) Fiennes as lead, I thought TEP was essentially visually literate and expensively produced soft-core porn, while TEOTA, with its fumbling and coughing and inconvenient apprehensions of divinity, was poking brain matter that sits uncomfortably between the ape-brain and the rational biped-brain. I still think of it as a disturbing film, and much more successful at its task than Greene's writing.Whisky Prajerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14076228013022881173noreply@blogger.com