I actually remember enjoying my first viewing in a theatre. This time, at home on tape, I was intermittently bored and irritated.
--The actress playing Valerie, the matriarch, gives the most egregious mimicry of Meryl Streep possible. Facial and vocal mannerisms, movement, reactions, etc. A truly shameful display.
--I am not a prude, but having a heroine that espouses general amorality, shamelessly and openly sleeps with her brother, and condemns ALL politics places insurmountable hurdles for an audience to clear in search of empathy, not to mention sympathy.
--Fiennes, with a bit of tonsorial change, playing three generation's of men? C'mon. Was this a salary saving strategy? Ridiculous. He also is miscast as a strong-willed, overpowering man. He is far too...sensitive.
--And then having a different actress playing Valerie as she aged, what, thirty years? It didn't help that she bore scant physical resemblance to the previous incarnation.
--The disappearance and then reappearance hours later of characters, now played by different actors, did not assist the viewer's appreciation.
--William Hurt was terribly miscast. It would be hard to find a more WASPish actor to play a Jew. His screen persona is completely wrong for this part.
This film reminds me of Bertolluci's failed film, "1900," in seeking to cover too much ground in one film. No writer, nor set of human buttocks, can withstand the challenge.
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Topic - Second time's a disaster: "Sunshine." - tinear 06:48:30 06/23/03 (5)
- "Bertolluci's failed film, "1900," " Failed with whom? American teenagers? - Victor Khomenko 07:52:59 06/23/03 (2)
- "Failed" because, first of all, - tinear 18:17:47 06/23/03 (0)
- Re: "Bertolluci's failed film, "1900," " Failed with whom? American teenagers? - patrickU 10:14:10 06/23/03 (0)
- I, - patrickU 07:39:14 06/23/03 (1)
- Moreover... - gware 22:47:30 06/23/03 (0)