Opua: memory and THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN
Opua: memory and THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN
I mentioned memory in the opening sentence of RETURN TO THE SEA and it is the second to last word in the short story, “Last Born.” Memory holds lives and personalities together. Yet I am repeatedly impressed by how much is forgotten. In the end almost everything and everyone.
I read John Fowles’ novel, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN, when it first came out; and saw the movie version when it was first released in 1982. I remember liking both, but when I watched the movie again the other evening the only scene that was familiar was the first, where Meryl Streep, who plays both an actress making a movie and the mid-nineteenth century woman of the title, wearing a cloak, walks to the end of a breakwater with waves crashing behind her.
For the first half of the movie, I thought it to be an all-time great. Somehow my admiration was tempered during the last half, perhaps because Harold Pinter, who wrote the screenplay, put some stagey lines in Meryl Streep’s mouth. Still it is one of her best performances, and I think that Jeremy Irons, who played opposite her both in the 19th Century story, which has a touch of Thomas Hardy, and in the movie within the movie, was even better. In both centuries he is desperately attracted to the Meryl Streep character, and in both abandoned.
I’d say the movie is unforgettable; but obviously it isn’t.
----------
Cobwebs on the self-steering vane are not a good sign. They have been removed.
Thursday, September 6, 2007