Orlando

This is one of those rare films that really captures magic. After watching it, I feel as though a fairy has enchanted the air around me. Maybe it's Tilda Swanton's fathomless, eyes. She stares at us so enigmatically, as if she can see through the camera, into our souls.

I could also go on about the sumptuous costumes and set design, but I'd say the subtle humor pervading the film was even more compelling and delightful. It assumes an intelligent audience, but does not come across as superior. The end of the film leaves me with a sense of hope for the future.

What in the world do we gather from this film. Tilda Swinton plays the never aging male/female lord/lady Orlando. Queen Elizabeth I is also played by the "wrong" sex.

When the young lord Orlando inherits the queens estate it's on the promise that he will always stay young and he does. What follows is a biography covering about 400 years and a sex change.

This is indeed a fun look at the roles held by the two sexes during the course of these centuries. Though it does play more or less as a drama it has large shades of comedy as well. For one we have Orlando often throwing a few comments to the viewers about the plot + the ridiculousness of the whole set-up.

Swinton is most certainly up for the challenge here. Portraying the ever changing lord/lady through this most strange journey. With wits and elegance this film comes off as one of the kind and something which should be experienced.

Though the film has exquisitely stunning visuals and everything looks absolutely beautiful, it just doesn't seem to grasp certain (I think:key) aspects of the book. It might be that their is way too much book to put in one film, but it does make the story less good and certain things would just have been much better, were they done like in the book. Many things just don't get enough time, though other things are added, or changed without making it better. I'd think that when you haven't read the book, you'd enjoy the film more, as always, but that even then you could see that some things could better be done differently. I'd recommend it though, because of the absolutely beautiful way everything is made. The sets are really beautiful and I give my compliments for those. Though the plot and how it is done in general lacks, how stunning everything looks makes it more than worth watching.

I saw Sally Potter's 1997 film 'The Tango Lesson' before I saw this more well-known one, but after viewing 'Orlando' I had the same overall impression of both--that is, I wish I could have enjoyed it as much as I admired it.

As a director Potter is a brilliant craftsman. Scenes are always compelling to look at; sometimes they are luscious, even stunning. Cinematography, art direction and costume design are outstanding. As a feast for the eye, Potter's films are hard to beat.

I have a little more trouble with the narrative, though. Trying to comprehend the meaning of Orlando made me feels like one of two scenarios is possible: (1) I'm a thick-headed Philistine that can't understand anything but the most literal story, or (2) the screenplay and its execution aren't up to handling such a difficult premise in an accessible manner. Even a bare-bones relating of the plot will show one that this is an extraordinarily ambitious and complex undertaking, and Potter's screenplay, which tends towards minimalism, is so obscure and just plain unfathomable at times (and aggressively so, as well) that it leaves me cold. If you're hoping to understand four hundred years of sexual politics by watching this movie, good luck, I don't think it does the best job of explaining things.

Again, as with the 'The Tango Lesson,' I would have to give the movie an overall positive rating, but only slightly, as the visual and the narrative elements are at loggerheads in my estimation. I would like to be able to praise it to the high heavens as a work of transcendent brilliance. Maybe one day I'll be so enlightened. Or maybe one day Ms. Potter will make a film that one can feel comfortable eating popcorn to while watching.

Tilda Swinton was born for this role. She IS Orlando. But that preoccupation aside, the first striking aspect of this film is the costumes! It opens on a scene with Orlando in Elizabethan finery, and moves through several historical periods, not least of them 18th Century literary England. That's something to see. The film is, as you would expect, very literary. You don't need to have read the book, but a working knowledge of typical euro-centric history and literature is helpful, I guess. Quentin Crisp plays a perfect Queen Elizabeth, the grotesque Institution herself, opposite Swinton's birdish Orlando. The photography is clear and even luminous at times, and the story moves along quite well--I consistently wondered what would happen. The exploration of gender, while it was obviously "the point", was not overdone, in the last analysis. Our freakish Orlando turns out to be quite human, which is a relief. The film is very well done; Swinton is a rare bird, never boring, and not to be missed.