★★★ Lolita (1962)
[Gino: 3.0 sp]
Well, my feelings about this film are pretty mixed, so this review will be just a list of impressions. First, I need to say that I have not read the novel and was essentially unfamiliar with the story, etc. I am assuming it was adapted to feature a British professor relocating to a US mid-western setting. I thought that aspect of it worked pretty well and was probably fun for the English cast members and (director) Kubrick himself. One thing I did not expect was that it was about 50% a comedy. And the comedic moments worked better for me than the dramatic ones. I thought the cast did a nice job. Yet, in the end, i.e. as a whole experience, the film didn't work for me, though I can't explain why.
I will say that Peter Sellers is in this film, so it is worth seeing just for a short bit in which he pretends to be a very German high school psychologist. That scene and the main character he plays are so odd and over-the-top that on the one hand it takes you out of the movie, but on the other hand it is your favorite part of the movie. Unfortunately, his character, though not a leading character, was a pivotal one -- but the problem is I also didn't understand what the heck the character was even doing in the film.
As I said a confusing mix for me, this film.
Posts
2 comments:
It has been a very long time since I saw this thing and I did read the book before I saw it so here is what I can say.
#1 They really made the girl much older for the film for obvious reasons.
#2 The book has a guy from Europe relocating to New England and I thought that is what happened in the film as well. Don't they travel to the midwest after the mother dies?
#3 I seem to remember thinking of Sellers not really belonging in the film based on this novel but I will say he was the most memorable thing about the film.
#4 The book was better. And as an adaptation of the book, the film version with I believe Jeremy Irons is better than the Kubrick film.
Also, Nabokov is a really great writer! I don't even pretend to understand or get half the stuff he tries to do in many of his novels but I can still appreciate them on a very superficial level. This is especially true of Pale Fire which I loved. I've been meaning to reread that thing as I also bought a book that has some theories about what's going on in Pale Fire but I haven't gotten around to it. By the way the book about the novel is longer than the novel. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is you should check him out. I was semi obssessed with reading everything of his in college but gave up.
Post a Comment