ferdinand1932

Having chosen a 30,000 word Joseph Conrad story and turned it into a dramatic screenplay, selected a named cast of English and American actors, chosen an excellent DP and shot the story in country locations and towns that added to the spectacle, it's fair to say that Ridley's Scott's debut is a resounding success. Why it's not better known and celebrated is a mystery.

The answer could be the story. Conrad's tale is a recreation of a period a century before he wrote ''The Duel'' and it tries to imbue it with the sense of warrior pride, arrogance even, among the French officers of Napoleon's armies. Scott's film is entirely faithful to that aim, and the casting of Carradine and Keitel serves it well.

Conrad's story is ironic insofar as it is about two men who go from being lieutenants to generals, from the pinnacle of Napoleon's success to the abyss of defeat, who maintain a conflict over all that time yet, have a mutual duty as officers to each other. Their bond is through pride. In Conrad's text the two officers are cast as opposites, stereotypes even: one is a fiery southerner; the other is a phlegmatic northerner. This opposition drive the long feud on.

For an audience the story may seem slightly ridiculous and pointless. It's probable that the last time western armies practiced such a code of honor was in the early years of World War 1 when captured officers were treated as honored guests of their captors. As such this ethical code is so old as to be unknowable.

This expression of duty between peers is articulated in the story as one rises and thither falls but is missing from the end of the film which only implies it. That is the only weakness in the film version of the story.

Scott's direction is complete: the framing and scene development are what is expected for this material, simple in the best sense of that in directing terms. It should be said that the production design is ravishing, from interiors to the bleak winter in Russia as the camera work and lighting. This film seduces the eye with its photography.

In ''Ulysses'' Joyce's uses the phrase 'ineluctable modality of the visible' to state that there is a reliance upon vision in perceiving the world. A sort of ''Esse est percipi''. This movie expresses that to the nth degree. But it is not interesting in anyway at all and its length elongates the torpor of its mediocrity to a degree that Joyce and Berkeley might have groaned at.

The Substance expresses Christopher Laschs's 1978 book ''The Culture of Narcissism'' quite perfectly. That is to say, that the torments of aging and the loss of physical beauty are the ineluctable anxiety of the narcissist and of the narcissist culture that fostered it: in other words, those that live by the sword, die by the sword. The nature of narcissism is manifold and has been in articulated in great and analytic detail, and it is accepted as a commonality of modern life, at least since it was empirically documented over 40 years ago. (Lasch uses statistics in the US to show that the increase in narcissism is a quantitative fact. It rise everywhere since is demonstrable)

As such, and without deviance from the logic of that argument, The Substance uses horror tropes and a simplistic deterministic linearity to drive its dramatic point home with the same spirit that a dull-witted student had used AI to write a paragraph. This aspect is manifest in the coy depiction of the multiple ''butt'' shots, whereas the loss of youth, and with it, fertility, ought really to be expressed in the transformation of the sexual organs, but because of censorship rules, and the obvious refusal by actors to do such scenes, cannot be done in a film. Thus, the impotence of the thesis is clear in the film medium.

That the camera work, the direction and editing are of singular point of view does not elevate the piece to anything of note. It does, if anything, underline the gruesome idiocy of its own narcissism.

This is not a good film. The themes it covers are explored in depth and well in the Cronin biography. Read that book instead.

This is not a good film because it squanders its talent, though they are all able, but the shrewish depiction of Suzanne is unfair and is a simplistic device for Beckett to seek affection elsewhere.

It is not good because the locations are obviously neither shot in Paris nor in France.. The latter may seem a quibble but the scenes of the war time in Roussillon are critical to rendering Beckett's life with Suzanne and to his development as a writer.

It is not a good film because it uses reductionism to render a stereotype of man in his relationships with women, that is not historically accurate and glosses over essential facts that would provide context: thus, the time of the Bray affair Beckett and Suzanne had lived separate lives, loyal, yes, but more as lodgers in the same apartment. The time spent on the unfortunate Lucia is wasted as it has no import but to display the relationship with Joyce, and if it was seen as important, it might have shown Beckett visit Lucia in the asylum as he did.

Where it has promise is in the duologue between the Becketts, which allow for a dramatic exposition of his inner life. Or some variant of it; ready for a streaming platform and easy consumption. These scenes were quite effective but not enough to save the overall feeling of superficial understanding and cliche: Beckett quoting an American review of Godot is ridiculous.