The top review here of, "no solid idea what this trash movie was about" is really embarrassing and should not be on imdb let alone the first remarks on a powerful and elegant epic that is so well crafted. It is like teenagers putting graffiti on a classic painting.
The film is really great once Taylor starts turning it up and the melodrama kicks in. It is really an anti-epic. You see the traces of the 60s showing up, with their own graffiti, and the demon goddess Taylor became. The movie is a lot more transgressive than its given credit. The quotation of slavery and all the southern tropes are countering its dreaminess bringing an unease across it. Clift is acting the hell out the character and it reads constantly. Point is he wants to be a writer, when he is in a literary moment in history that does not need him. How do people come of age in historic times?
He chooses to craft his own love story, choosing the bad girl instead of the good one. She gives him soul at a cost. It's deadly, reflecting the setting. Like, she is pro-slave... It is almost Interview with the Vampire how he reacts to her.
That is the beauty of melodrama on screen it is bringing the most bleak kind of shocking art, but at a totally comfortable distance... for us to experience, not be imprinted with. They just saw the need to hint at things back then. They are our parents films, much as we think we invented everything they were every bit like us.
The film is really great once Taylor starts turning it up and the melodrama kicks in. It is really an anti-epic. You see the traces of the 60s showing up, with their own graffiti, and the demon goddess Taylor became. The movie is a lot more transgressive than its given credit. The quotation of slavery and all the southern tropes are countering its dreaminess bringing an unease across it. Clift is acting the hell out the character and it reads constantly. Point is he wants to be a writer, when he is in a literary moment in history that does not need him. How do people come of age in historic times?
He chooses to craft his own love story, choosing the bad girl instead of the good one. She gives him soul at a cost. It's deadly, reflecting the setting. Like, she is pro-slave... It is almost Interview with the Vampire how he reacts to her.
That is the beauty of melodrama on screen it is bringing the most bleak kind of shocking art, but at a totally comfortable distance... for us to experience, not be imprinted with. They just saw the need to hint at things back then. They are our parents films, much as we think we invented everything they were every bit like us.