Movie Adaptations...50 Shades of Grey
Jul. 4th, 2015 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatLast night, I rented via on demand, the controversial movie adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey.
Overall? I agree with A.O Scott's review in the New York Times.
Anthony Lane's New Yorker review reminds me of a upper crust Brooklyn Heights society dame reviewing a restaurant in Jamaica, Queens, as if she expected to eat at the Four Seasons. Madame Bovary this isn't, Lane states. Well, duh. Be like going to the Avengers and expecting, well The Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns. Not going to happen.
OTOH...it's no where near as risque as Last Tango in Paris, Five and a Half Weeks, or ahem Story of O. But neither were the books. Actually, it was a pretty tame movie. I've seen more explicit and far crazier not to mention violent sex scenes on HBO.
Snippets from Scott's review that I agreed with appear below the cut.
Reviewers have complained about Ms. James’s pedestrian prose, but the bad writing serves an important purpose. “Fifty Shades” not only destigmatizes kink, bringing bondage and spanking to airport bookstores and reading groups across the land. But it also, so to speak, de-sophisticates certain sexual practices, taking them out of the chateau and the boudoir and other fancy French places and planting them in the soil of Anglo-American banality. If E. L. James were a better writer, her books would be more — to use one of Anastasia’s favorite words — intimidating. And much less useful.
Which is an apt statement. You have to realize going into it, that we're dealing with internet fanfic erotica. Not Madame Bovary or Lady Chatterly's Lover or even Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty series. Be a bit like going to see The Avengers and expecting Dark Knight Returns or The Watchmen or The Seven Samurai. Not happening.
Mr. Dornan, given the job of inspiring lust, fascination and also maybe a tiny, thrilling frisson of fear, succeeds mainly in eliciting pity. In print, Christian is a blur and a blank — a screen onto which any given reader can project a customized masculine ideal. On the screen, he risks becoming just some guy, which is how Mr. Dornan plays him, without mischief or mystery. There are actors who might have given Christian a jolt of naughty, bossy life, most of them creatures of an earlier movie era. Cary Grant. William Powell. Paul Newman. Sean Connery if you wanted the roughness a little closer to the surface. Jamie Bell was a convincing dominant in Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac: Volume II,” though his character was more artisan than aristocrat.
Mr. Dornan has the bland affect of a model, by which I mean a figure made of balsa wood or Lego. What vitality “Fifty Shades of Grey” possesses belongs to Ms. Johnson, who is a champion lip-biter and no slouch at blushing, eye-rolling and trembling on the verge of tears. She’s a good actress, in other words, and Ms. Taylor-Johnson matches the colors and the visual texture — the chilly blues and pulsing reds, the drab daylight and the velvety dusk — to Anastasia’s moods and desires.
Yep, pretty much. Unfortunately the male actor they cast in the role just doesn't exude that combination of lush, fascination and fear. He's too bland for the role. So it doesn't quite work. Amongst the more modern movie stars - I think Eddie Redmond, Alexander Skarsdale, Ian Sommerhandler, Jensen Ackles, Henry Caville might have been able to pull it off. Dakota Johnson (apparently Dakota was a popular name for that generation of kids, we have Dakota Fanning...) does all the work here.
They do have chemistry -- more so than many people stated online. But he's missing that special something. But then, I also thought Robert Pattinson, the guy who played Edward in Twilight lacked any on-screen charisma. And the writer wanted him to play the role.
Overall rating? C-
It's fun. Not great. Worth $5.95 (which is what it cost on demand, all things considered that's dirt cheap. Movies in NYC cost $15-20.). Scott is right in some respects the books were better. They were. There was more suspense and more of an edge to them.
If you hated the books, skip the movie. But I'm guessing you already knew that or at least I hope you did.
If you find this whole thing highly offensive and triggery and how dare I discuss such a horrible thing in such a way - go donate money to your favorite domestic violence charity. If you don't have one? Go HERE Ranting to me about it is as effective as throwing jello at a wall.
Overall? I agree with A.O Scott's review in the New York Times.
Anthony Lane's New Yorker review reminds me of a upper crust Brooklyn Heights society dame reviewing a restaurant in Jamaica, Queens, as if she expected to eat at the Four Seasons. Madame Bovary this isn't, Lane states. Well, duh. Be like going to the Avengers and expecting, well The Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns. Not going to happen.
OTOH...it's no where near as risque as Last Tango in Paris, Five and a Half Weeks, or ahem Story of O. But neither were the books. Actually, it was a pretty tame movie. I've seen more explicit and far crazier not to mention violent sex scenes on HBO.
Snippets from Scott's review that I agreed with appear below the cut.
Reviewers have complained about Ms. James’s pedestrian prose, but the bad writing serves an important purpose. “Fifty Shades” not only destigmatizes kink, bringing bondage and spanking to airport bookstores and reading groups across the land. But it also, so to speak, de-sophisticates certain sexual practices, taking them out of the chateau and the boudoir and other fancy French places and planting them in the soil of Anglo-American banality. If E. L. James were a better writer, her books would be more — to use one of Anastasia’s favorite words — intimidating. And much less useful.
Which is an apt statement. You have to realize going into it, that we're dealing with internet fanfic erotica. Not Madame Bovary or Lady Chatterly's Lover or even Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty series. Be a bit like going to see The Avengers and expecting Dark Knight Returns or The Watchmen or The Seven Samurai. Not happening.
Mr. Dornan, given the job of inspiring lust, fascination and also maybe a tiny, thrilling frisson of fear, succeeds mainly in eliciting pity. In print, Christian is a blur and a blank — a screen onto which any given reader can project a customized masculine ideal. On the screen, he risks becoming just some guy, which is how Mr. Dornan plays him, without mischief or mystery. There are actors who might have given Christian a jolt of naughty, bossy life, most of them creatures of an earlier movie era. Cary Grant. William Powell. Paul Newman. Sean Connery if you wanted the roughness a little closer to the surface. Jamie Bell was a convincing dominant in Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac: Volume II,” though his character was more artisan than aristocrat.
Mr. Dornan has the bland affect of a model, by which I mean a figure made of balsa wood or Lego. What vitality “Fifty Shades of Grey” possesses belongs to Ms. Johnson, who is a champion lip-biter and no slouch at blushing, eye-rolling and trembling on the verge of tears. She’s a good actress, in other words, and Ms. Taylor-Johnson matches the colors and the visual texture — the chilly blues and pulsing reds, the drab daylight and the velvety dusk — to Anastasia’s moods and desires.
Yep, pretty much. Unfortunately the male actor they cast in the role just doesn't exude that combination of lush, fascination and fear. He's too bland for the role. So it doesn't quite work. Amongst the more modern movie stars - I think Eddie Redmond, Alexander Skarsdale, Ian Sommerhandler, Jensen Ackles, Henry Caville might have been able to pull it off. Dakota Johnson (apparently Dakota was a popular name for that generation of kids, we have Dakota Fanning...) does all the work here.
They do have chemistry -- more so than many people stated online. But he's missing that special something. But then, I also thought Robert Pattinson, the guy who played Edward in Twilight lacked any on-screen charisma. And the writer wanted him to play the role.
Overall rating? C-
It's fun. Not great. Worth $5.95 (which is what it cost on demand, all things considered that's dirt cheap. Movies in NYC cost $15-20.). Scott is right in some respects the books were better. They were. There was more suspense and more of an edge to them.
If you hated the books, skip the movie. But I'm guessing you already knew that or at least I hope you did.
If you find this whole thing highly offensive and triggery and how dare I discuss such a horrible thing in such a way - go donate money to your favorite domestic violence charity. If you don't have one? Go HERE Ranting to me about it is as effective as throwing jello at a wall.