I remember walking out of the theater in confused disgust after viewing "Apocalypse Now," disconcertingly aware that a pretentious, aimless, even dopey, film had been parasitically grafted to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Coppola's film featured stereotypical press corps fellatio, including a camera laden idiot played by Dennis Hopper, a besotted Brando, whose intellect was exclusively represented by a still shot of a pile of mostly harmless, liberal books -- in lieu, I suppose, of any exertion at acting on his behalf, but with a hefty purse, nevertheless.
At least, I told myself, I will not -- ever -- have to come across anything like it, again. In my life.
And then, I viewed this peculiar hybrid of plagiarism and idiocy, and another slice of innocence was burned away.
First, let me admit that I have not read "House of Mirth," nor have I any intention whatsoever of doing so. What I say here, therefore, has solely to do with this film and nothing to do with Edith Wharton's work, in any sense.
I was appalled, if not surprised, by the numbers of the uninformed and unaware who have strenuously worked their keyboards on behalf of this innocuous, but truly execrable, film.
Never mind that the acting is -- monotonously and without exception -- wretched, or that Gilliam worshipers, escaped somehow from the fog of the X-Files, have turned out in their unthinkable thousands to publicly smooch this deformed bauble; never mind that Eric Stoltz -- deservedly called brilliant in "Mask" -- was absolutely clueless in every category of acting skill, in this film.
Never mind all of that, which is obvious and not worth discussing, but add this: "House of Mirth" is a condensed, abridged, pamphlet-scale version of Flaubert's masterpiece, "Madame Bovary." Emma's best, and most boring, hope for marriage, whom she spurned; her male benefactors demanding the price of her flesh for her debts, her scrambling from one mistreated lover or friend or shop-keeper to another, and finally, to her suicide by poison.
This observation cannot possibly be original to me -- but I have not read it anywhere. If no one in the crowd of mainly X-Files viewers bothered to see this film at all, I have no doubt that thousands of literary critics have -- surely -- noted the literary plagiarism, in the instance of this novel. I don't care, personally. I don't enjoy, or even "get," Wharton's stuff. Never did.
But my indifference to Wharton is not the cause of my outright hostility to "The House of Mirth," the film. This film plainly sucks, and it sucks under any possible criterion of acting or film-making that may be applied.
Now, my continuing hope for cinematic excellence in the U.S carries two wounds -- one, as I've said, "Apocalypse Now;" and, two, this sad act of cinematic desperation.
At least, I told myself, I will not -- ever -- have to come across anything like it, again. In my life.
And then, I viewed this peculiar hybrid of plagiarism and idiocy, and another slice of innocence was burned away.
First, let me admit that I have not read "House of Mirth," nor have I any intention whatsoever of doing so. What I say here, therefore, has solely to do with this film and nothing to do with Edith Wharton's work, in any sense.
I was appalled, if not surprised, by the numbers of the uninformed and unaware who have strenuously worked their keyboards on behalf of this innocuous, but truly execrable, film.
Never mind that the acting is -- monotonously and without exception -- wretched, or that Gilliam worshipers, escaped somehow from the fog of the X-Files, have turned out in their unthinkable thousands to publicly smooch this deformed bauble; never mind that Eric Stoltz -- deservedly called brilliant in "Mask" -- was absolutely clueless in every category of acting skill, in this film.
Never mind all of that, which is obvious and not worth discussing, but add this: "House of Mirth" is a condensed, abridged, pamphlet-scale version of Flaubert's masterpiece, "Madame Bovary." Emma's best, and most boring, hope for marriage, whom she spurned; her male benefactors demanding the price of her flesh for her debts, her scrambling from one mistreated lover or friend or shop-keeper to another, and finally, to her suicide by poison.
This observation cannot possibly be original to me -- but I have not read it anywhere. If no one in the crowd of mainly X-Files viewers bothered to see this film at all, I have no doubt that thousands of literary critics have -- surely -- noted the literary plagiarism, in the instance of this novel. I don't care, personally. I don't enjoy, or even "get," Wharton's stuff. Never did.
But my indifference to Wharton is not the cause of my outright hostility to "The House of Mirth," the film. This film plainly sucks, and it sucks under any possible criterion of acting or film-making that may be applied.
Now, my continuing hope for cinematic excellence in the U.S carries two wounds -- one, as I've said, "Apocalypse Now;" and, two, this sad act of cinematic desperation.