Re: humani nil a me alienum puto

Of course, me saying "the ENTIRE movie"....followed by Anything would
Have To be an overstatement.

>From what I remember, though, the film was supposed to be based upon
Maddox's biography; given that, the juicy bits (yes, yes, of course I'm
just remembering those...but there were so many of them) were played up
far out of proportion to their representation in Maddox's bio. On top of
all that, the first juicy bit was dead wrong -- the couple weren't
standing when Nora gave that first hand job to James, they were sitting,
and I'm pretty sure it wasn't the middle of the night -- late afternoon,
early evening, perhaps? For some reason I'm picturing a trellis (or
some other kind of wooden lattice structure), not up against the wall of
a building. For that matter, I'm pretty sure that scene wasn't in
Maddox's bio -- it was lifted from Ellmann's.

Most of Maddox's bio was in Ellman, for that matter, except for the
earlier parts about Nora's childhood.

Cripes, now I'm starting to sound like Kim. Maybe I should follow her
example and just not watch these things.

You're right, though, that the focus was on Nora, and for that matter we
should add that it was on Nora in the early part of their marriage. I
think it would have been better if the film had covered Nora's whole
life -- Nora not being able to get away from James even when she was
hospitalized, her wanting to leave him for not giving her a stable home
(how many times did they move? 17? More?), James' continual Going Out
Drinking while Nora was left at home, their children and the daughter's
emotional instability, Etc.

Stanislaus, I thought, was very well represented in the movie, though.
I feel he really came to life for me. That was a high point. James was
a bit too humourless -- I think too much like Stephen Dedalus and not
enough like James Joyce.

Jim

Omlor@aol.com wrote:

> Jim,
>
> You write:
>
> "Naturally, the entire Joyce/Nora movie revolved around those
> letters."
>
> I think this is a bit of an overstatement. Clearly, Joyce's attitudes
> towards sex and his manipulation of his relationship with Nora were a
> large part of the film. And yes, the letters were cited at several
> moments. But it seemed to me that the film, for the most part, was
> about Nora's struggles -- with her own family, with the Joyce family,
> with living as a woman in the artist's community in Trieste, with the
> way she was living and dealing with a strangely jealous writer for a
> husband, and later the way she was dealing with motherhood and a
> separation from the man she loved. I think the movie, made by a young
> Irish woman director, had a lot more to do with Nora and how she coped
> (or failed, sometimes, to cope) with the entire experience given her
> own personal history than it did with simply her love life or her love
> of erotographology.
>
> Of course, you may just be remembering the juicy bits. :)
>
> All the best,
>
> --John

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Received on Sun Aug 24 17:37:58 2003